Color Run!

Today was a busy morning.  My husband is helping with our friend's garage sale fundraiser this morning and we had some furniture that we were donating so we were up early to load.  I ate my breakfast before we loaded and made his at the same time (he always like to have a big breakfast before doing a lot of manual labor due to a prior bad experience when he didn't eat enough).

After loading, I went out and put trash bags over the two front seat of my car, since I was going to be driving   us home from the race.  Then I went online and got driving directions so I would be all set. I made sure all the stuff I was going to be taking was ready last night.

About an hour before I wanted to leave, I hopped on my treadmill and pounded out two miles at a slightly faster than easy pace.  When I was done, I ran upstairs did a quick rinse off, put on my race outfit (with bib already attached) and headed to my friend's house to pick her up.

After the race we went over to check out the adoption fundraiser our friend was having (we were bummed we couldn't help out much because of the race) and met up with my husband and her family there.  After some chatting, I left her in the capable hands of her husband and went home to shower.  It felt so good to be clean again!!

I went home a spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing (and starting to wash some of the clothes I had on for the race).  I also got in a nap with my dog and husband.  Around 4 my husband started asking me what we were going to do for dinner.  I wasn't at all in the mood to cook anything and I was glad when he reminded me that our friend's had invited us to come "hang out" with them, which usually means that we can feel free to eat dinner with them.  So I texted her and she said that we should of course come over and have hamburgers and brots with them, which made me super happy because I didn't have to cook anything!  We went over, ate and hung out and then went home and went to bed.  It was a busy day, but a good one!

Color Mania Race Report

Race Start - 9 am
Temperature - 63 degrees
Time - 38:29

Again, I didn't have many goals for this race because I was doing it with someone else.  I wanted to have a good time and I wanted to make it through the race (since I had done 2 miles beforehand).

When I got to my friend's house, she was almost ready, but had realized that she didn't have any safety pins to attach her bib with (the race didn't put any in our bags, boo!) So we snapped a few pictures and then went to CVS and she got some safety pins for her bib.  The drive was uneventful and we got parked just fine.

Before the race, all nice and clean! 

Some of our last moments of being clean.

We grabbed a free Port-O-Potty and got out just as the first wave was starting (the race isn't timed and they start people in waves every 5-10 minutes or so until everyone is running).  We headed to the back of the group and waited for our turn to go.  We ended up being in the very front of the fourth wave (which I think may have been the last one).

We managed to start the race without any color on us, which was surprising given how many people were attacking each other with their color packets while waiting for the race to start but quickly had that remedied at the first color station.  There were 3 more color stations (a total of 4) during the race and we were pretty colorful by the time we got done.  The course was definitely designed for people to cut distance off if they needed to (lots of weaving and doubling back) which was fine because it wasn't timed.

These are the color stations we had to run through, each one was a different color.

My friend did a really awesome job and we took very few walk breaks.  We even upped the pace (on my suggestion) for the last tenth of a mile or so.  I was glad I had brought my $25 digital camera to take some pictures with.  Our finish time was 38:29 (the race was un-timed but I brought my stop watch) which is a 12:24 mile, about a minute per mile faster than the practice run we did together on Thursday!  I was really excited for her and she seemed really proud, she hadn't done any races before and hadn't really even started running regularly until about 2 months ago.

Post Race (well almost, this is before our last run to the end)