The Color Run!!!

In October I wanted to do The Color Run really badly, but the girls that I had planned to run it with had other things come up. I contemplated running it by myself, but its not really the kind of 5K that you run alone. I was really bummed out because that was the race that I had been working up to for my entire weight loss. Sad story I know...fast forward to this past Sunday when an opportunity to run The Color Run with a great group of girls fell into my lap. I gladly accepted and registered with their team. I woke up bright and early this morning and was bummed to see that it was raining, but we pressed on! The rain unfortunately did not stop, but we had a blast! We froze, but we still had a great time! I have been warned that this race is a hard one to actually run because there are so many people, but we actually got a chance to bypass the biggest part of the starting line for the first wave. We were pretty much able to run the pace we wanted, occasionally having to dodge a walker or an umbrella. This race was new to me so I had no idea what to expect, keep in mind that my experience was probably a little different from most because of the rain. First off, the color stations were different than I was expecting. I would definitely suggest having something like a bandana to cover your mouth. I was spitting blue for quite a while before I learned to keep my mouth completely shut in those areas. When you are in the middle of a color station it is pretty much like running through a huge color cloud. If you don't want to get covered with color I would suggest sticking to the middle of the lane. The closer you are to the people throwing the color the more you are going to get, naturally. There were two color stations towards the beginning of the race and two more towards the end. The finish line is like a big party with color being thrown everywhere! They handed each of us a bag of color at the end of the race and we had a color fight with our little group. The color fight mostly consisted of us dousing one girl from our group who had come through the race pretty unscathed. One of the girls in our group timed us with My Run Keeper and we finished in 29: something. I don't remember the exact seconds time...I think it was 34. Regardless, we finished in under 30 minutes! I love running with a group because it pushes me. We were definitely running faster than my normal pace, but we were having so much fun that I hardly noticed! Now for the aftermath, because of the rain the color pretty well set in. From what I have read on a normal day, a good portion of the color dusts off. We got to the car and tried to scrub as much as possible but to no avail, the color was not budging! I was starting to get pretty worried. When I got back to my car I covered my seat with a huge beach towel, I came prepared. I changed into dry clothes and flip flops trying to hide as much as possible. I am a modest person, but my main concern at that point was getting into dry clothes because I was freezing! I cranked up the heat and headed home, feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside. I know it sounds cheesy, but this race was a big deal for me. One of the biggest goals I set for myself when I first set out to lose weight was to be able to run The Color Run. I couldn't have picked a better group of girls to experience this day with. This was a huge check off of my list, and finishing with the time that we did is just icing on the cake. Girls if you are reading this, thank you for today! You all are great! I have included some pictures down below. The first two are before and after, and the third is what I looked like after scrubbing with baby wipes (they didn't do much). The last two are just shenanigans at the finish line. Oh and in case you are wondering, a good scrub in the shower took care of the rest!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah