Color Me Rad

I have not fallen off of the end of the world..I'm still alive..I'm breathing..and all of that good stuff.  I have not posted or checked on blogs for two weeks..I'm going through withdrawal !!  It is rolling up to the end of the school year, which means busy, busy, busy!  Between trying to get stuff done and home..gardening and work..I've been coming home just exhausted.  Hopefully I'm now over it..we will see.  I'm back now though!

Two weeks ago I went down to see Kristi, Shawn and the nieces to run The Color Me Rad..it is a family tradition (who knew when we ran it for the first time last year it would then become a tradition!) I headed down on Saturday and enjoyed a fun filled day hanging out with everyone.  Kristi made lots of yummy food over the weekend.  We had some yummy baked ziti and some sangria to go with it.

After dinner we headed to packet pickup, which to my surprise was super easy this year!  Last year Shawn and I waited for over an hour to pick up our packet, Kristi and I walked right up and out this year.  I should have known from the ease of packet pick up that it was going to be a great run!

Last year I ran with Ali.  I ran with her because she just took off and I figured someone should keep up with the second grader..so we ran it together.  This year Ali was  bit disappointed to learn that everyone was going to run together..which meant that everyone also got to run with Aunt Pam!

Tori and Aunt Pam can't wait to start to run Color Me Rad

All clean

This year the kids wore goggles..no devil eyes for them!

If you remember from last year, I had the color get in my eye and my contact soaked it up...

Yep a bit of devil eyes..  Well the good news is that I did not get any color in my eyes.  I did run through the color with my hands covering the side of my sunglasses.  Because I did that I must have looked like I was a bit frightened of the color so I don't think that the volunteers put very much color on me..I'm sure they were thinking look at the crazy girl scared of some corn starch!  Although to be fair, they didn't get any of us as color soaked as last year.  Last year it was crazy how much color we came home with.  We were just a mess.  This year it seemed like the perfect amount of mess.  

We ended up all staying pretty much together.  I did realize that if I wanted to do sprints I need to take those little girls with me on a run.  It was like a bunch of jack rabbits!  Walk then sprint ahead..then walk and sprint ahead.  At one point Kate went flying past me and I commented to the five year old..your sister is fast..well Tori felt that was an invitation to see how fast she could run and yep..I was off on a sprint.  

Shawn and Kristi enjoying all of the color

Everyone had fun running!

Music, color cornstarch flying..time to dance!

 It was a great day for Color Me Rad!  We had no parking problems..it was a bit chilly to start with, but turned out to be perfect running weather.  No devil eyes.  Everyone ran together and had fun and lots of color on everyone.  Couldn't ask for a better running day!

After the run Kristi, Tori and myself headed over to the strawberry patch to pick some fresh strawberries.  Nothing beats some fresh picked strawberries!

It was a bit chilly but once you started to pick you were fine.  And the lovely donkey in the background didn't mind us picking strawberries either!

Next up Marine Corps Historic Half

April..glad you are gone and randomness

So looking at my running totals for April, it was not a great running month.  I ran the least amount during April.  Why?  Not really sure.  Could be because I was not feeling great for a week and my parents were here over a weekend which always throws off my running.  Who knows, but hopefully May will look a lot better.

I ran Sunday at Burke Lake with Becky.  It was a beautiful day for a run.  While we were running we past a girl and she ended up running with us most of the time.  The funny thing was that I know that Becky was hoping that she wouldn't pass us.  I knew Becky wanted to slow up a bit, but didn't want this girl to pass us so she kept up the faster pace.  Oh Becky!  Turns out that she was using us to help keep her pace.  We ended up chatting with her a bit and then dropped her off near where she started since she was a bit confused where she started out at the lake.  She was there with some friends who were walkers and she decided that she wanted to run some.  I guess it turned out that we were good for her and she was good for us too!  Great when you meet new people while running!

Tuesday was run club as usual.  I got there and figured I was the only one from our table running in the rain.  Yes I said rain, I was running in the rain.  I did tell Gary that I could easily be talked out of running since it was such a crappy night.  But I sucked it up and went for the run.  Turned out I had a pretty decent run.  Jen showed up as we were taking off, but she wasn't running since she banged up her knee at work that day.  Looks like I was on my own.  Well not really there were other runners, just nobody really running with me.

We took off and yikes!  One of the guys (I'm assuming it was the guys) really stunk!  Is it bad to say that?  I know we are runners and sometimes we are a bit nasty.  (Hello!  My group runs in 100 degree weather, sweats and heads into a bar to stink up the joint! ha!)  But really no reason for that kind of stank that was wafting towards me at the beginning of the run.  I can understand afterwards, but really we haven't run more than 50 feet.  So I decided to try and pass some people to get away from the odor.  The problem was that the two guys that I was convinced that one was the problem started passing people too.  Ugh!  Finally they went ahead and I had some fresh air.

I had a pretty good run.  I did realize that I run faster than a 6 month pregnant girl but also the same pace as some 80 year old men.  Yeah I have some serious speed!  Although I will say that normally the 6 month prego girl is usually super fast when she is not carrying around another life.

Got back to the bar and found out that I wasn't the only one from our table, people just decided to show up later.  Glad I wasn't sitting solo at the table. :)

This weekend I have Color Me Rad with the nieces and Kristi and Shawn.  Should be fun as long as I don't get the red eye like I did last year.  I am sure that I will have a great time!  Kristi has deemed it a new family tradition to run the Color Me Rad race.  How can you not when people are throwing color at you and you are surrounded by crazy people!

Eye Spy...Color Me Rad

So this weekend I had a fun 5K.  I headed down to VA Beach to run a family fun 5K with my old college roommate and her family.  We were running the Color Me Rad run! 

I signed up a few months ago to run.  It sounded fun and all three nieces are running it too!  It was their first 5K!  And since there are 3 kids and 3 adults (Me, Kristi and Shawn) I figured our odds of not losing a kid was pretty good. :) 

Saturday me, Shawn and the girls headed over to packet pickup. 

The line was pretty long for packet pick up.  Luckily they had a bouncy house so the girls didn't mind the wait at all!  Finally we picked up our race packet, shirt, and sunglasses and we were off!

The next day we headed to the race an hour early.  We were running at 9:05.  The race is only 15 minutes from Kristi and Shawn's place.  Slowly I was starting to get Hot Chocolate Race flashbacks.  It took us over an hour to park.  People were getting out of their car and heading for the race while the lone driver was left to park.  Umm Hot Chocolate Race??  Kristi then informs me that we are not racing on the road.  There are some trails through the grassy area that we are running.  Which is great..they do not have to worry about keeping roads closed and having runners not able to run b/c they missed their running time. 

We parked the car and headed to the Sports Complex.  Lots and lots of people.  Turns out this is the largest Color Me Rad event so far (although I have no way to know if that is true or the man was just yelling that in the mic for crowd reaction).  We were all ready to run!

We are all so clean!!

We finally head to the start and have to wait in a really long line.  Thankfully they are starting us off in waves and they are waiting a good amount of time between them so we are not going to be all bunched together.  There are lots of kids and parents with kids in strollers and wagons.  A very family friendly event.  We are off and Ali takes off.  I decided that I would run with her and just let her take the lead in what we would run or walk.  For her first 5K..Ali rocked it!  All the girls did great!  It turned out we each ran with a kid.  We headed to the first color station and we got sprayed with some wet color stuff.  They sprayed it from what you would use to spray weed killer over your lawn.  They did not skimp on the color.  I had what looked like black (but later we would realize it was dark blue) all over the side of my face and the side of my body.  Both Ali and I decided that we did not like the spray.  Soon we came to a bunch of people throwing colored cornstarch at us.  Yeah cornstarch is more our style!  I think it was yellow and orange..in total there were four color stations that we went through.  It was great! 

There was a bit of a Color Me Rad issue...at the last spray station I was sprayed with red.  It got under my sunglasses and I guess in my eye.  It turned my contacts red!  So I ended with one zombie eye!!!  As soon as I got home and took out my contact my eye was fine.  I just have to change my contacts. 

If you are going to run a color run..and you have contacts..wear some goggles...the sunglasses don't always cut it!  It didn't hurt, but it did freak some people out! 

Great day for a run.  The color did come out of most of our clothes.   I have my shoes in the washer right now hoping that they will come clean.  I had to really scrub to get the color off of my skin.  Missed a few spots of extra scrubbing, by tomorrow's shower I should be just like the old Pam :)

Just a little color after the run!

We looked so different at the end of the run!

Hopefully I will get my old shoes back! lol