Fitness Challenge: Week Three

Yep, another week of boring work outs. Boring boring.

Oh contraire, dear reader!

The week kicked off with a family adventure -- the Color Run! Their tag line? "The happiest 5k on the planet!"

My sister flew to Minneapolis from Indiana to join us on this adventure. Runners are instructed to wear plain white t-shirts at the start, and at every 1k marker you run through a cloud of a dyed powder (corn starch, non-toxic). There's a different color at each 1k marker, and by the end of it you're a rainbow.

Near the starting line.

I was happy that my friend Laura joined us for this adventure. She drove to St. Paul from Rochester, MN, just for the event, with her husband and little girl in tow. I have no idea what time they had to leave their house, but we had to get up at 5:30 a.m., and we already live in the metro area. That's dedication! She wrote a post from her perspective on the adventure, if you'd like to read it.

If you can imagine, they had 20,000 runners signed up and ready to run. The race began at 8 a.m. and they let 1,000 people go every 5 minutes from 8:00 until the last runner had gone. We had to wait in queue for 20 minutes before finally making it into the 5th wave -- we were dripping in sweat before we'd even taken off, it was so hot.

Lindsey and Wayne took off running right from the start, while Kristi and I stayed back with Marissa, who ran the first 1k of it but walked the rest. We lost Laura halfway through, as she ran ahead so she could meet with her daughter at the 4k marker and run the last 1k with her.

When we first started Marissa was confused and said, "I thought people would be putting color on us!" She didn't realize they didn't put color on you the entire way, just at certain points.

First orange.

 

Then pink.



Feeling blue!


I missed photographing the last station. At the finish as people crossed they opened up the packets of colors we'd been given in our race packets and threw them all into the air. I dumped mine over Marissa, and then later was given a half-used packet of pink from a random runner, which I also dumped over her. Only by then her glasses were on top of her head.

Rock star!

We miraculously met up with Lindsey and Wayne, considering Wayne had left his phone behind and by this time there were several thousand runners congregating in the finish line area for the festivities, all in rainbows of color that made people unrecognizable.


She had no fun whatsoever.



Our "after" photo.

Fitness is boring.

On a separate note, I was thrilled to have my sister there, not only for this run but for my first-ever "Fit Club" workout on Saturday. "Fit Club" is basically open to anyone who wants to get in a free workout with other people. The coach for that Fit Club picks a workout video from the Team Beachbody suite of products, and people go to town working at whatever level they're at, each of us sweating like never before.

Kristi has lost a lot of weight and toned up a lot since making her decision to get fit over a year ago. I am so incredibly proud of her and of the changes she's made in her life. Thank you, Kristi, for inspiring me!