Wednesday, July 25, 2012

I found the rainbow connection and brought it home with me

This past Saturday, I participated in the Color Run in Columbus. It turns out that the Color Run is the perfect 5K to participate in when you really really meant to train but instead put it off until the week before the race.

Best laid plans, right? When I signed up, I had exactly enough time to do Couch to 5K, with a little cushion, even, for those times I might not be able to run. But I kept procrastinating BECAUSE YOU CANNOT BREAK LIFELONG HABITS EVER EVER EVER SO JUST EMBRACE THEM ALREADY OK?

Anyway. Joe and I got up early (5:30 early, you guys, the sun wasn’t even awake yet) Saturday morning to make the drive to Columbus and hang out at Tim Horton’s until the rest of TEAM RAINBOW BUTTS! showed up. Because yes, our team name was TEAM RAINBOW BUTTS! which was great because I had to sign a waiver so my cousin could pick up my race packet on Friday and I got to write RAINBOW BUTTS! on an official form. So what I’m saying is, I can cross that one off of the Life List.

Our mascot is a rainbow. Coming out of a butt.

There were about a million and four people at this race, and all were wearing white shirts, as that is the race’s only rule. And the REASON you wear a white shirt? Is so when they throw colored powder at you throughout the race, the color really shows. They also give you a bag of colored powder with your race pack, so at the very end of the race, you can throw it up in the air with everyone else and thoroughly cover yourself with what is basically flour. Some people started opening their color packs before the race even started which is AGAINST THE RULES but no one yelled at them so whatever, they're the ones who have to live with themselves.

The “race” actually takes a pretty long time, unless you are a super fast person who happens to end up at the very front of the pack. There was some backlog at a couple of color stations along the route, mostly because of people stopping so they could get as much color all over them as possible, which was completely unnecessary, because as some intrepid souls discovered, you could just as easily roll around on the ground at each color station and be completely covered in a beautiful rainbow. Though, to be fair, having to step over people who were basically making powder angels in the middle of the street didn't help the backlog problems either.

We are painted with all the colors of the wind.

The race ended at a Jazz and Rib festival, where I helped myself to some beer, because even though my watch said it was 11:30, my body felt like it was at least 3pm, SO TAKE THAT, RULES, I'M AN ADULT AND I DO WHAT I WANT. Then we got really tired on account of the sun and the physical exertion and the getting up at ungodly hours, so we all went home and I went to bed at like 10 o’clock on a Saturday night because apparently that is who I am now.