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The Kentucky Horse Park’s renowned steeplechase course, usually reserved for elite equines, will become the exercise playground of fitness enthusiasts from across the region in June, for an event that local organizers hope will put Lexington on the map as a place that embraces active lifestyles.
On June 13, the first Great American Fitness Challenge, organized by the Lexingtonbased marketing group BrainBox Intelligent Marketing, will bring together fitness participants at all levels, from novice fun-runners to trained athletes, to celebrate a day of enjoyable exercise and healthy competition.
“We are calling it a fitness experience, not just a fitness event,” said Richard Ford, president and CEO of BrainBox. “We have blended together one of the most unique races you are ever going to hear about.”
Ford, who served as COO for Host Communications prior to launching BrainBox in
1999, has decades of experience in planning and marketing fi tness and athletics events. Among the company’s successes is the Great American Rivalry series, created in 2004 along with the company’s sister brand iHigh Inc., which celebrates more than 100 of the most competitive rival games in high school football across the country every year.
During the last decade, BrainBox also has organized fitness challenge experiences at high school gym classes nationwide on behalf of the U.S. Navy and its elite unit, the Navy SEALs, in an effort to address the general lack of fitness
among today’s young people.
BrainBox organized a series of events to give high school students a taste of what real
fitness was like, administering the Navy’s basic physical fitness tests in a fun and encouraging atmosphere with the help of some inspiring military role models.
“Our slogan was, ‘Can you hang with a SEAL for an hour?’” Ford said. “Our goal wasn’t to recruit. It was aimed at the physical fitness message, and an awareness for what the Navy SEALs do as a way of life.”
The events were a success, Ford said, reaching 70,000 students over six years, from Los Angeles to Dallas to Chicago. But fi tness isn’t just for those who are gunning to match up with the nation’s military elite, and it isn’t just a youth issue, so Ford and BrainBox started to consider ways to carry the fitness message further.
Too often, people think of fitness as a short-sighted health concern that they need to address, but it can — and should — mean a lot more, Ford said. The goal of the Great American Fitness Challenge is to present fitness as an entertaining and adrenalin-pumping way of life, a source of personal pride and accomplishment and a community celebration of athletic performance at every level by every person.
The day’s activities will include a 5K fun run, a 15K race, and both an open and elite division for a three-mile obstacle course on the Horse Park’s steeplechase course, complete with actual horse jumps and daunting exercise stations to be conquered before crossing the fi nish line.
All finishers in the 5K, the 15K and the obstacle course competition will be awarded
hefty medals for their accomplishments, with gold, silver and bronze versions presented to the top finishers in each event. Corporate teams and other groups of 10 or more can also
sign up to compete for the Great American Fitness Challenge Trophy, with each group’s top five scores tallied to determine the winner.
The BrainBox team — including the Challenge’s director of operations, Patrick Williams, and director of social marketing, Tim Savage — have been working to spread the word and build awareness in the run-up to the event. Their efforts have included the coordination of an extensive social media campaign and the organization of local running clubs, sometimes combined with tours of Lexington’s growing local craft brewery scene.
Ford said the local fitness community has been quick to embrace the concept, too, with local gyms helping to spread the word on social media and throwing down the virtual gauntlet to enlist more competitors. In recent months, the event has started building on itself, Ford said, with community partners, like-minded companies and supportive fi tness fans bringing a constant stream of new ideas to the table.
“When people start helping you think of more things to do, you know you’re onto something,” Ford said.
Ford said BrainBox has worked to develop meaningful partnerships for the challenge with sponsors who share a real stake in the Challenge’s all-embracing outlook on fi tness. Subway restaurants, for example, will be providing a year’s worth of free sandwiches to the top male and female individual competitors in each category. Alltech also has signed up to sponsor the event and will be featured in the obstacle course’s 200-yard feedbag-hauling activity, Ford said. Representatives of the Navy SEALs will be on hand, too, offering words of encouragement to competitors in the elite division.
The organizers also have teamed up with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Bluegrass, with a portion of the proceeds going to benefit that organization.
Families and spectators who just want to check out the fitness scene without necessarily stepping up to a starting line are welcome to attend as well, Ford said. The day’s activities will include community yoga sessions and sample exercise classes throughout the day,
along with an expo of businesses and organizations centered on healthy living.
“The bow that ties it all together is fitness,” Ford said. “We’re encouraging people to get in
the game. It’s all about living a fitness lifestyle.”
And the June event at the Horse Park is just the beginning, according to Ford. Over the
next 12 to 18 months, Brainbox is working to organize regional Challenges in San Diego,
Dallas and Atlanta. Eventually, the plan is to bring the competition’s national championship event back to its home base in Lexington.
For Ford, who has had first-hand experience with game-changing technologies and ground-floor opportunities over his career, the Great American Fitness Challenge, along with the changing fitness mindset it supports, offers big potential benefits.
“You seldom get an opportunity to be the first at anything,” Ford said. “And when it happens, you’ve got to really embrace it.”