Our original plan for our August Kindness 2012 was to frequent local establishments for family fun and dining. A chance for us to support local businesses and do the tourist scene in our hometown (flood museum, Heritage museum, etc). Alas, we had to pull a QB audible on this one because work, and plans, and crazy got in the way.
My sisters and our guys signed up for the 5k Color Me Rad run a few months ago, and since B and I were down the the wire on getting prepared to move our bodies for any length of time - we spent a few evenings jogging together to see what we might be capable of doing. Training day1: we could jog a half mile without totally hating it. a half mile. when we needed to be able to do 3 miles in less than a month. it was a hardly successful, very sweaty first training day.
Another few 'training attempts' later (I was able to do about a mile and a half and figured the excitement of everyone there might get me amped up for another half mile), and a few trillion 'chase me around the trampoline' games with Greyson - before I knew it Color run day was upon us.
We slept over my sister's house the night before and when we got up that morning, I was a nervous worrying maniac. Kayla will claim to not be a runner, but she runs for fun. She successfully ran the Tough Mudder this past May as the only girl in her team of four. Running and fun are two things my body does not associate together - so I was mostly worried about holding everyone else up. And I really wanted to not walk. I am fine with jogging so slow it is walking speed, but I wanted to be at least doing the jogging movement. hahah, this girl has got big dreams, let me tell ya.
So we headed over to the race only to realize that there was a major traffic back up into the race since Color Me Rad had apparently had over 8 thousand runners sign up AND it was college freshman move in day. oops. We crept in traffic for a long enough time that we were almost an hour late to our race start time.
We made it though and were all able to get on the start line together. Our group consisted of Brand and I, my sisters, Kevin, and our friends Bryn and Ryan. Thankfully, my parents joined us to watch the kids and photo document the race. We were so sparkling clean and white before the start of the race :)
Instead of a play by play of all the hills, powdered color (some of which was thrown directly into Tasha's open mouth, hah!), and a bathroom break in the weeds - I successfully jogged the whole race...we are using jog here loosely as it was at times definitely as slow as speed walking at times....but let's get to the good part. Throughout the race there were different color bomb stations, so by the time we made it almost to the finish line (where my dad and Booboo were watching of us), we already had quite a bit of color on us. And then Bud grabbed Booboo and we finished out the race through the biggest color bomb of all.
The Color Me Rad race was a success as our August kindness, even if it was a change from our original plan. I proved to myself that I could run/jog a 5K even though I was so worried and nervous I couldn't do it, especially after having Gemmi only 6 months ago. It was kindness towards each other as we laughed for most of the race because why is getting pelted and sprayed with stuff so hilarious? And the race proceeds benefited The Ronald McDonald House (yay!).
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| scf - thanks Kayla for organizing our team! |
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| tackling my dad |
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| thanks Chum & Abba for babysitting & cheering us on! |
Brand stuck by me even when I was jogging at turtle speed for the whole race. As did Kayla and the two of them kept me going and didn't act like I was holding them back for one minute (even though I know both of them could have finished it about a trillion times faster than we did). Thank you guys for that.
For anyone considering running in a Color Me Rad race yourself (visit their website here), make sure to consider how you're going to drive home. We didn't and ended up scavenging the car trunk for things to sit on or wear over our painted skin. Because it wouldn't have been appropriate for us to do like Booboo does. (hah)
I feel so proud that our kids are learning that sometimes being kind can mean being messy and having a ton of fun too.
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