BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — What makes you lace up your running shoes? Well, many people in Bowling Green have been putting on their running shoes for more than a decade to help young people dealing with illness.

What You Need To Know

  • Bowling Green's Frozen Four race has been running for over a decade

  • The annual race benefits young people dealing with serious illnesses

  • This year’s recipient was 14-year-old Cullen Barnhouse, who has Vacteral Syndrome

  • Each year the Frozen Four brings in anywhere from $6,000–10,000

The ticking race clock is familiar for Frozen 4 race director Lilly Riherd.

“Sometimes it’s frozen, sometimes it’s not,” Riherd said. Runners were braving the cold conditions to race in the 12th edition of the Frozen Four.

This year's four-mile run was held on Saturday, Jan. 7. A two-mile walk is also held each year. Everyone has their own reason they came out to run.

“I run at least one race every month sometime during the calendar month, and today was kind of a good one. It made 216 consecutive months, which is 18 full years,” said participant Nick Tunks.

“It’s not fun, it’s just good for you. What it does for me mentally is more important,” noted another runner, Jonathan Vanderpool.

This annual race was the brainchild of Riherd, a longtime runner and race director, to help a young Warren East High School student-athlete back in 2011.

“He had gotten sick and cross-country camp, ended up with MRSA, was in Vanderbilt for about 3 months, so this was just something on a whim we decided to do. We called it the Frozen Four,” Riherd recalls.

Since then, the race has continued to raise funds for other young people in South Central Kentucky in need of medical help. This year’s recipient is 14-year-old Cullen Barnhouse, who has Vacteral Syndrome.

Riherd says each year the Frozen Four brings in anywhere from $6,000–10,000 annually. “Yeah, I don’t directly impact maybe that person’s life in a whole, but this little bit does help and I think this one event pulls the community together,” she notes.

Vanderpool agrees.

“There’s no greater love than laying your life down for someone else. And if that is true, which it is, then running to make money to help somebody who’s in need, there’s no greater joy in that,” he added.

Riherd, who also created and directs the Bowling Green marathon, the coldest temperatures the race has been run in was a chilly 4 degrees several years ago.