12 in ’14: surprise race! run or dye houston

when i ran my first 5K this year, i made the decision to do an event a month in 2014. a lot of people have asked me “why not just do 14 in 2014?” and to them i have always responded that i might try that. one run a month is a lot (its especially a drain on my wallet), so doing more than one a month seemed a bit much. but in january, i did a 5K and a marathon (24 hours apart, i might add), so i was just one away from 14 in ’14. i’m happy to say that, if i stick with my one event a month from now until december, i will hit that mark.

my may event was the tough mudder (which you can read about by clicking the link), but then i stumbled across the ‘world’s most colorful 5k’ – run or dye. it’s one of those 5Ks where you get blasted with colored powder every kilometer. my 8-year-old niece, audrey, has always been asking to join me for a run, and i thought this would be the perfect introduction for her, so i signed us both up.

let me just get this out of the way – i’ve now done mud runs and color runs. mud runs are much, much better. i still have splotches of color all over me. and i’ve showered six times since then (it’s tuesday when i am writing this, and the run was on saturday). so that should tell you how hard this stuff is to get off of your skin. also – the course wasn’t that great. it literally wound its way around several parking lots at reliant park. but i guess that’s a function of the fact that they can’t really do it anywhere cool, because they would get color dye everywhere. so i guess that makes sense. it’s just… running in a concrete parking lot in the hot, hot summer wasn’t the most enticing.

now that that’s out of the way – i had a friggin’ blast. the week before the run, audrey and i made matching t-shirts, proudly displaying our team name (the super fast fireworks). i had (and always have) so much fun hanging out with her. she was a trooper, and i think she had a pretty good time.

as far as running goes… i definitely got a PR for longest ever 5K – 54 minutes was how long it took us to run 3.1 miles. but that’s ok, i wasn’t doing it for time. audrey was just curious how long it took.

so… do i recommend the run or dye? hmmmm… that depends. know what you are getting into ahead of time. go with friends. and just embrace the color. then i think you’ll have a good time.

check out a video i made from the run (yes, i wore a gopro, cause i’m awesome):

and here are some pics: