Color Run DC 2015 occurred on May 17, 2015. This post has been done but I was waiting on the official photos and they turned out terribly.

SO, in honor of me restarting a fitness regimen soon, here’s my belated recap, most of which has been done since about May 18, 2015… oops!

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People love running. You can get that runner’s high, you feel better about yourself and the world you live in as you feel the wind on your face.

I was never one of those people.

However, I still make an effort to run every now and then. I know that it’s a great way for me to build up stamina (something of which I currently have very little). Additionally, I have this intense fear of being chased so I figure being able to outrun kidnappers/my brother/mean dogs will, no doubt, come in handy. In fact, sometimes I am motivated to run solely by the fear that I will get chased by some scary monster and get eaten because I’m out of breath and wheezing with my hands on my thighs saying, “Hold on, can we walk a little bit, I have a stitch in my side.”

I guess I’m not too worried about that, though, because I barely trained for this 5K. I started out all right with my training, using RunKeeper’s beginner’s 5K training plan. (RunKeeper is my preferred running app. Although, to be fair, I haven’t tried any other ones. But it’s available for Android and gives me a lot of great data to work with.) I was running about every other day, and I even pushed myself to train on consecutive days when I knew I was going to have trouble finding time to run, like when Karen and Christine visited or when I went to Florida (recap posts coming soon for that, by the way; going through photos still).

So you totally crushed this 5K then and are now a runner? You’ve seen the light?
No, friends. I did not and I have not.

What happened?
Well, life did happen. Not running while I had my regular routine paused did throw my training off.
The bigger factor was probably the fact that I live in a neighborhood of hills. What does this mean? It means that I ran uphill in every direction. I felt like I was constantly running uphill, up very steep hills. As I left my apartment behind me. As I struggled to make it back so that I could finish the run. It was uphill both ways, with seemingly very few downhills?

Those hills were really brutal. I often deviated from the training plan (which alternated from jogging for a set distance, a set time, and alternating walking/running) and just attempted to jog/run without stopping to walk. I failed every time because I could not run up these hills and then continue running afterwards; I was just too pooped to do it.

While I started out sticking relatively closely to a training regimen, in the weeks leading up to my 5K, I ran twice, each time only getting about 1 mile in. In my defense, I did start a new job with weird hours about 3 weeks ago, so I was pretty proud of myself just for going running after work.

TL;DR I was essentially completely unprepared for my race this past Sunday.

But the day of the race came, and it was too late to turn back!

While not as short as the Cosmic Run felt, I think this race still came in to less than 3.1 miles, as confirmed by my fitness tracker. It felt a little more painful than the Cosmic Run because of a few reasons:

• I had dressed in preparation for it to pour, but in fact, the humidity stayed in the air and then the sun came out.
• There were a LOT of walkers who were pretty evenly distributed along the trail. This made it really difficult for me to maneuver through the crowds to run.
• There were a few inclines aka moar hills ughhhhh nooooo…

I am used to running in the evening, so running at dark for the Cosmic Run felt more like my usual routine than waking up to run at 9 AM. The colors were pretty fun, but I was extremely skeptical about the added “shine” portion to this year’s Color Run. Glitter sticks to everything and never comes off. (Unless you are trying to add it to something, in which case, the glitter jumps off at the first possible opportunity.) When I ran through the course, glitter didn’t really stick to my clothes and only a little bit stayed on my arms.

When we finished the race, we picked up our medals and additional color packets and went to celebrate. Again, the glitter didn’t seem to want to stick but we were able to have a lot of fun dancing around and throwing colored powder at each other. Also, I am really glad that Shout is a sponsor of the Color Run because getting excess powder leaf-blower blown off is really handy. (And FUN!)

The hardest part about runs like this is going home. I immediately went to shower because I had to work at a festival that afternoon and…
… I found that I had a BUNCH of glitter on my skin. Underneath my clothes. My whole torso was covered in glitter. I don’t just mean that I sparkled a little, but I couldn’t even see skin on my chest or belly. It was just a layer of silver glitter that I couldn’t rub off. I tried to wash the remaining glitter and color off my body and hair and stepped out when the water was running clear again.

BUT when I was blow-drying my hair, I found that I was just blowing glitter all over the place again, guaranteeing that I would have a lot of vacuuming to do when I got back from my festival shift.

I am glad that the Color Run was more well-organized than the Cosmic Run, but I think I had more fun raving at night with UV colors and without glitter, to be honest. I am still finding glitter on my chest and clothes and floors, and I think I’m going to be sneezing blue for another few days.

Anyhow, I don’t know how many more 5Ks I’m going to do. They’re pretty fun, but I might hold off on these color ones in the future. The cleanup afterwards is pretty annoying, not gonna lie.

Do you have any favorite races to run?
Do you have suggestions to help me enjoy running more? Because regardless of whether I become a super hardcore runner, running is still an ability I think I’ll need, especially when it comes to running away from things, which I do often.