Color Run!

Now yall don't understand how long I've wanted to do this Color Run.  I heard about it probably a full year before I was able to run it.  They announced it was coming to Nashville in the fall and here's my reaction - Dangit!  That won't work I'll be in Knoxville for a football game...priorities yall - but it's a Sunday! I can come back and run!  I took a week or so to spread the word and get a group together and we go to sign up SOLD OUT!!!  It's not for like 9 months!!!!  I tried to get on the waiting list, I tried begging...nothing worked.  I would have to wait.

Then they announced a second Color Run in March.  I signed myself and Ben up immediately, called my sister, she signed up immediately. Call my mom and dad and they signed up!  This is really going to happen!

The whole crew!

My dad who used to run alot has told us, if it's 40 degrees and over wear shorts, if it's less than that wear pants.  You'll warm up when you run.  It was probably 39.9 degrees.  I knew I'd be fine when running, but I didn't anticipate the hour wait to start the race.  They did wave starts, but they didn't assign times, so we all got there, formed this GIANT white snake (except for the blotches of color where my mom got impatient and didn't hold her free packet of color and threw it well before the starting line) and stood while they started people in like 10 minute increments maybe 50 people at a time.  It was freezing!

Finally the race started.  I ran with my sister, Ben with a friend of his and Mom and Dad ran solo.  Ben and his friend took off and were well ahead of our wave.  They turned up Broadway (in downtown Nashville) and the first color zone was yellow.  They said all they could see was a cloud of yellow, people in masks spraying the yellow stuff.  They began to wonder if it was a bio hazard attack or if this was the color run.

Bio Hazard Terrorist Attack or the Yellow Color Zone?

We finished the race.  It was fun. But the after party was 10000000 times better than the race.  They pump loud music, throw out millions of packets of color, free socks, and party.  Jenn, her sister, and her mom played there for probably and hour while Dad and Ben stood back and waited....and waited...

After looking forward to the race for so long it was awesome, but I think next time I'd want to be a volunteer. Spraying on that color seems awesome!

Clearly you get way more color at the after party than the run.  

Note to future color runners, It doesn't come out of light hair very well.  Jenn and her sister had pink highlights for several days.

We survived the hardest race of our lives...or did we?

After the half marathon Jenn took a break off of running.  A long break.  Ben took our week long vacation off...then got back to running.

I knew we had a race scheduled 4 weeks after our half marathon, 3 weeks after we got back from vacation.  In those 3 weeks after vacation I think I ran 3 miles.  I had eaten and drank my way through Disney World, then not run so I was beginning to sweat it when the next race, the Spartan Race, came up so quickly.

This was the second to last weekend in March.  It was cold, VERY cold.  This was truly the race from hell.

The race was Sunday in Charlotte, NC at the White Water Rafting training site for some of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. There were 6 of us going.  Ben and I drove in from Nashville to Knoxville and piled in a friend's dad's van and the 6 of us headed towards Charlotte.  Ben usually takes the lead in planning trips, he likes things planned out and people like for them to be planned out for them. Well the story differs depending on who you talk to but let's just say that no one knew where we were stopping for the night.  Were we driving all the way to Charlotte?  Were we stopping in Asheville where one of the people on the trip used to live?  Ben said he didn't know so he didn't make us a reservation.  After deciding to drive to Charlotte, we couldn't find a room.  8 hotels later we FINALLY found one with a room.  We'll take it!  We even cancelled our room in the other hotel for the next night and decided to stay here the whole weekend.

The next morning we got up, piled in the minivan and headed out to the mall in Charlotte - what else were we to do for the day?  As we pulled out of the hotel parking lot we heard a noise.

Not just flat, but riding on the rim with 6 people in the van.  We all got out, found the spare, changed it, took it to get it repaired where of course it couldn't be repaired so we had to get a new tires.  After 2 hours we were back in the car heading to the mall.

The girls shopped for a little bit, we found a F.Y.E., remember those old stores that sold what were called CD's?  It was like walking into a time capsule, it even smelled the same.  We bought the new Reel Big Fish album because we still live in that one week in the 90's when ska was popular at our house.  We saw a movie and headed to some chain Mexican restaurant for all you can eat enchiladas and margaritas.  How else would I fuel my body for a race I clearly wasn't prepared for?

We headed back to the hotel where I lay away in bed unable to sleep for fear of how the race would go the next day.  I've done obstacle races before, so this wouldn't be too different, except it takes much more of a badass.  At other obstacle races, if you can't complete an obstacle you just usually cuss, then walk around it.  Not here, you cuss multiple times, then complete 30 burpees.  You don't know what a burpee is?  Consider yourself lucky.

Let's start the race day by saying I have great friends.  The weather was <expletive> terrible.  Pouring down rain and roughly 45 degrees.  We ran from the car to packet pickup and ran back to the car to wait until our wave start.

The first obstacle of this 4 mile race?  Wading through chest deep water and with it being at the White Water Training Center and pouring down rain there weren't any obstacles that weren't water.  The course was solid mud, like ankle deep mud.  Running wasn't much of an option - not that I could run far or fast after a month of no running and eating like crap.

On of our teammates had to head to the medic tent because he had gotten so cold.  He's an EMT and said when he got to the medic's tent he told the people to forget about him.  There were people way worse off than he was.  But they did cut his clothes off him to get him warmed up.  Yikes!

We finished the race.  It had started to half sleet half rain by the end of it. My lips were solid blue and I couldn't get my teeth to stop chattering. I was afraid one was going to break they were chattering so hard.

This was Sunday and we were supposed to drive back to Knoxville, drop off people and drive back to Nashville for work the next day but there was NO way we could drive back in the condition we were in.  Our random hotel we found two nights before let us come back - even though it was way past the time to check out - to shower and warm up.  I honestly don't know what we would have done if they hadn't let us.  We were in bad shape.  So Thank You random hotel in Charlotte, we'll forget about that little scabies incident that one of our friends had after that visit.

Unfortunately I have none, zero, zip pictures from the race day.  You probably wouldn't want to see the pictures of some of us half naked riding back in the van trying to warm up, or covered in mud with blue lips.

Edit:

After cleaning out some phone albums we found these on Ben's phone that he swiped that day and non of us remembered!