Texas Rangers senior business partnerships executive Brad Ballard has been an avid runner since his days working with the Phoenix Suns.
He participates in marathons and runs regularly to wind down, relax, stay in shape, and just reflect on the things around him.
“I lost like 70 pounds, and from there, I just started running all the time and got super competitive about it,” Ballard told The Dallas Express. “It’s just a great way for me to stress relief and really just kind of think on the day as well.”
But just over a year ago, as he was going to work, Ballard was shot in the heart and had around a 1% chance of survival. Miraculously, he survived and quickly began working toward a return to his love of running, starting with a Peloton bike just a couple of months after the incident and quickly ramping up his training sessions with a treadmill and outdoor running.
“When I was in the back of the ambulance, I was making sure I could wiggle my toes,” he recalled. “I can still run was my thought. I decided to go back. … You are what you are.”
Ballard’s competitive drive kept him going through physical therapy and helped him return to doing what he loves.
“They told me, ‘Hey, you don’t have to go this hard. You can slow down,'” Ballard said. “And I was like, ‘No. I’ve got to do this. This is for me.’ … In my head, I never really viewed it as ‘rehab.’ It was just training.”
Ballard began training with the goal of returning to the Dallas Marathon this year, which he did a couple of weeks ago, competing in the weekend’s half-marathon (13.1 miles) event, exactly 13.1 months after the incident.
“That’s what I kind of told myself in the hospital was, ultimately, I wanted to run that race in a year because I was a runner,” he told The Dallas Express.
His ultimate goal was to finish the race, but Ballard surprised himself by finishing in two hours, 46 minutes, and 50 seconds, only about 20 minutes off his usual half-marathon time.
“I wanted to do it in a certain time before I got hurt, and then after I got hurt, I just wanted to say I did the whole race,” he explained. “Just try to keep this slow pace maintained. I thought, ‘You’re going to run half of it and then walk the rest of it.’ Then, as I’m going, I hit the 5K marker and was way out of my schedule. Then, I got to the 10K and was still ahead of schedule.”
“Ultimately, I just kept going,” he continued. “I was like, ‘I can do this,’ and just ran the whole way. I was very surprised by that.”
Now that Ballard has returned to what he loves, he plans to continue running competitively, but don’t expect to see him in another full marathon any time soon.
“I’ve done a full, and I’ve done a half before,” he told The Dallas Express. “Regardless of health, I will never do another full because that is way too much training and a lot of running.”