We all live in a yellow (and red and blue and green) submarine

We packed our best white clothes, our oldest shoes, and our passports, and headed to Ypsilanti Michigan for

Four hours in a car, with enough snacks to sustain us in the event of being stranded without access to food....the Goofy Girls were again driving South.

None of us has ever done a Color Run before (off topic, it is VERY hard for me as a Canadian to spell colour this way). We didn't really know what to expect, but the fact that it was fun, messy and not timed was just the break we needed from our training for 'serious' runs.

I was reading Runner's World magazine this month and they focused on 'fun' 5Ks, and I was hoping that I'd emerge from the Color run looking just like the woman on the cover.....

 This was us, before, after a pretty awful night sleep in a very nice hotel room. We scored the most awesome parking spot too, I will post a photo later. Lori's awesome kids (and mine) made us custom shirts to wear, which started out pristine and white, along with our nice new white headbands. 

What a lovely town, very pretty, SO easy to find our way around in. I was loving the EMU Eagles (but I never saw one).

The entire race was among the best organized I've ever run. They said that it was sold out with about 15,000 people running, and it was seamless. We ran in waves of 1000 runners, the course was well marked, people were cheering all over the streets, the volunteers and police and ambulance folks were visible and welcoming and fun.

Each Km marker (we think) had a different colour, with crazy happy people spraying you with huge bottles of powdered colour.  You could tell you were approaching a dye station because the herds of runners and walkers would slow down and bottleneck and the clouds of dye were visible for a block.

We ran along laughing (except when we were trying not to inhale the dye). The course was super wide (whole streets) so there was never an issue with the walkers (who stayed to the right), strollers, groups or runners. The fact that it wasn't timed was brilliant, nothing to worry about except getting as coloured as possible.  Near the finish line we dumped the dye packets we were given on each other....

Needless to say Lori has great aim ;-)

 

After the race there was a party in the park, which turned into a big dye party, and included awesome snacks (now addicted to Kind bars) and shopping (got us some new socks).

I may have mentioned what great sports the volunteers and police and fire and other folks were? The nice fireman even let us pose on his truck, we were pondering asking him to hose us down!

would I run this again? Totally! Matter of fact we are considering doing the Windsor one in a few months. It's a scream for 'runner's to let their hair down and leave their Garmins at home.

A trip to Michigan isn't complete without a stop at the Joe, to pay homage to my second favourite hockey team. Go Wings Go *unless you end up playing the Leafs.