Sgt. Joshua Deforge Challenge

       In May of 2010, Joshua Desforges was killed in action in Afghanistan. Josh was a Ludlow resident and a graduate of Ludlow High school. When Josh was killed I got a phone call from the principal of Travis's school. That was because Josh's mom was Travis's para. Even though I had never met Josh, Arlene is family, and it was devastating news. 

       Yesterday, was the annual Sgt. Joshua Desforges walk/run challenge. It is a 5K run/walk with watered down marine obstacles. I have thought about doing it for years and the date (always the end of April) never worked out. This year it did. Right before the race we had the opening ceremonies. There were a couple of speeches and it was really nice. This is at the Sgt. Joshua Desforges memorial, which is in the back of Ludlow High School. I have eaten lunch on that bench quite a lot. 

       Travis and I got a pre-race selfie and were ready to run. Or he was ready to run and I was ready to try really hard to make it to the end. 

    Once the starting pistol went off, we ran down the back parking lot of the school, down next to the baseball diamond, and up into the cross country trails in the woods. Travis and I chose to run up the first hill. Or, we started to. That hill just kept going up and up. I forgot how steep (and endless) some of the hills are back there. I was really pleased that Travis stayed right next to me the whole time we were running. Usually, he liked to bolt ahead, since he is so much faster. But he stayed right with me. Maybe we can start running together again. Now that "running together" would actually mean running together. That could be fun. 

     The first stop was pushups when we got up the first endless hill. I am really bad at pushups, but I did them. The next obstacle was squats. I am actually really good at squats, but they are tricky when you have just gone up an endless hill and have jelly legs. We also had to crawl under a net, through a drainage pipe (not a gross one, lol), carry sand pails up and down a hill, climb over different heights of logs (Travis hopped over them like they were ground poles!), through the tire obstacle, up and down the stadium stairs, and also pulling a heavy tire to the top of a backstop with a rope. I had to wrap the rope around me to use my body weight to pull the tire up. Travis grabbed the end of his rope and just hauled the thing up like it was nothing. That guy is amazing. 

     In the end we did not have a great finishing time. Travis and I finished in an hour and 15 minutes. But we did not skip any of the challenges or obstacles. We also didn't throw up at all (which can't be said for all the race participants). Arlene said Josh would have been proud of us. I was proud of us. It was a hard race but I am really glad we did it. It was an honor to honor a hero's memory doing a small bit of something he loved. And that water we were handed at the end was an amazing prize!