Running a 5k was on my 30 by 30 list. I’ve sort of always wanted to run one. In junior high and high school I was always one of the more walking than jogging members of my PE class, the slow ones who could barely finish a mile and were sorely out of shape. I was the opposite of athletic. I remember freshman year of college when I wanted to join the crew team they had a week (more than a week?) of novice training sessions and one of the things we had to do which should have been a piece of cake was to do a warmup of maybe a quarter mile jogging? I was huffing and puffing and seriously out of breath. I may have even threatened vomiting. If I couldn’t run a quarter mile I’m sure the coaches thought I was a joke wanting to be an actual rower. The thing is I am extremely stubborn (I like to call it determined) and wasn’t going to get a little thing called “being out of shape” stand between me and what I wanted – which was to be a kick-ass rower. So I worked my butt off, I learned to row. I learned to jog. I learned to like to exercise. And I was pretty darn proud of myself for how much I improved. Then I stopped rowing somewhere around the last year of college and exercise drifted off my radar again until we were planning our wedding. At which point I got into super fit shape… until I had kids… and exercise fell of the radar AGAIN… until I wanted to lose the baby weight… and well I think you can probably notice a trend. I have a habit of making a habit of being in shape… which I stick to for some duration of time and then slowly drift away from.

Lately I have been doing more yoga than anything else but I missed running and I feel like it gives me a big chunk of time to just think and be in the middle of a busy day. So I set out to do the couch to 5k (again) and get back in the habit. When I heard about the color run from a few of my east coast friends I was sold… running while being pelted with colored powder? How could that NOT sound like fun. I was so disappointed when I found out that my local run was while I was scheduled to be out of town photographing a wedding….

well turns out that hurricane Sandy had other plans… tearing through the east coast and delaying my flight so that I was able to make it to the run after all. Never mind that I got on a redeye flight just a few hours later (and with lots of blue junk up my nose nonetheless) it was SO fun! I couldn’t go to something like this and not bring a camera so I busted out my oldest dSLR and cheapest lens, wrapped everything in a plastic bag (if you want to look classy and professional, there’s really nothing better than having your camera stashed in an old sandwich bread bag) and headed out. One note however … if you plan to do the color run while holding a dSLR please realize that they are heavy, that your arm will start hurting, and that you will probably wuss out of the whole “running” part of the race. I ran about halfway before I started seriously regretting my decision to try to run while holding something like a 3 pound weight which was awkward to hold and encased in a plastic bag. Oh well. The photos were totally worth it.

So without further ado… color run 2012! I’m totally going again next year!