Color Me Rad race report

Submitted by Sarah Diamond, @voxpax2

Have you ever had a day where things seem so surreal it takes a few days just to fathom what has happened? This happened to me on August 18, 2012, when I ran my first 5k.

 

I had decided after reading the dedications that Sean was collecting during his runs, that I too would change my life and start running again. I trained for 3 months and over that time I kept increasing the distance. I began to understand better how to prevent my asthma attacks from happening by trial and error!

Soon the day came and I was standing on the field just near the starting line, watching the participants gathering. I must admit at first I was very intimidated as I was by myself with no one I knew. To keep myself calm, I started tweeting what was happening. You can see the very messed up tweet videos in twitter land. :)

I had entered the Colormerad.com 5K Run which every year supports a different charity. This year it was for Save A Breast. This was also the first time that this type of run was being held in all of Canada, so it was really nice to have that experience, too.

  

We started off with some random colour packs being thrown and people started getting into the mood of running, and also tossing the paint around. From there we lined up, and began our run. I tried to remember to keep my pace but I must admit, when your running with nearly 5000 people, you can’t help but get excited and want to run faster with others around you. I think that was one of the hardest things I have ever experienced was not to keep up with everyone, but to run at the pace I knew I had to in order to complete the full race.

I hit station purple first and you can see from the video it was just colour and my camera moving around. One thing I did notice later from the videos, was that there was not one time in which there wasn't some type of laughter happening. There were no frowns, only grins and cheers all the way through.

I then hit the other colours like pink, blue, yellow, green along the way. Each time I tried to video something so you out there may see it. You guys kept me calm by tweeting back to me which was very cool. THANK YOU!!! :)

Soon I found myself at the half way mark, stunned at how quickly I got there, and I wasn’t even wheezing, even with all the powder that was being thrown around. Soon I found myself heading back, going through the colours again. One thing I tried to capture was a guy who did the 5k in crutches. I asked him how he had done it and he said he had rolled his ankle. On his shirt it said Birthday Boy. Now if ever there was a spirit there for running, I saw it in him that day.  I was able to complete the run and finish off the little videos on twitter.

If not for the constant stops of paint and maneuvering around the crowds at each station, I think I would have done my best time yet, but as such I think I ended at 54 minutes as I got distracted with a few of my friends there to celebrate me crossing the finish line.

At the end of the race is when I got the most questions about the #run3rd posted on my back, and I explained what it was about. Two of my friends have stated now that they want to start running, and I had people ask off the street why I was painted and I was able to use that as a great starter to introduce the cause.

  

To top the day off, I got a short tweet asking me to become a Team Captian and I said I would be honoured.

BEST DAY EVER!!!

Side note: Next time I have to figure out a way in which to protect my phone... realized that half the audio cut out on the videos because my phone got covered in paint. Fortunately, it has survived its ordeal. :) I already have plans to do another run called the “Energizer Night Run.” Hmm, I wonder if I can get some lights attached to the shirt???

Favorite Quotes Overheard:

Mother: “Oh I gave up trying to throw the paint and just told my kids to lay down and roll.”

Announcer: “If anyone come to me asking what their run time was, I’m going to punch them because this is not what Colormerad is about! We are here to have fun and get painted.”

Announcer: “You should have seen it when we had to cross the boarder. You try explaining why you have 10 tons of coloured powder in your possession. Needless to say the dogs didn’t find anything!”