Run or Dye!

Last weekend, my sister Laura, my friends Emma and Liz and Liz's friend did a 5K colour run. I have always wanted to do one because they just look like so much fun (if I had a bucket list, it would be on it.... I keep meaning to do one of those at some point maybe I should finally get around to it!) and so when my friend suggested it to me, I was completely up for it! Especially when I knew that the run would be at a castle, how cool is that?!

We arrived at Hever Castle at around 8am and it was FREEZING! I was kind of regretting wearing shorts and no hoodie at that point! It was meant to be a pretty warm day but I think it was the coldest day of the year so far. It was so misty, we could only see a few feet in front of us and it was pretty eery seeing the castle through the mist! We had to walk what felt like 5k to get to wear everything was set up for the race. There weren't that many people about when we first arrived so we just went and got our goodie bags and stuck our run or dye tattoos on our cheeks! You just have to do it :).  It wasn't that long until the music started on the stage and they started to pump out the colour. Needless to say, we made a beeline for the stage; who doesn't want to be covered in loads of coloured paint?! It didn't take that long before we were looking pretty bright and colourful, ha!

There isn't even a filter on this picture, everyone got covered in pink and orange :)

Our boys arrived just in time to see us start the race. We went with the second wave of people as the first wave was for the hardcore runners and people who wanted to achieve a personal best. In hindsight, I think we would have gone with the first lot as most of the people we were with were walking! We had to do a bit of weaving to get around them but after a little while the crowd thinned out a lot more and we were able to run. At every kilometre mark, they had colour stations where people would throw more coloured paint at you - the more noise you made / dancing you did, the more you got covered. Emma opened her mouth at the wrong time and ended up with a load of it in her mouth and I got lots of green paint in my ears and eye, ha ha!

Thank goodness it wasn't toxic, right? The race was fairly easy, there was a big hill which was a bit tough but just as it got tough, we rounded the corner and saw the finish line. We met up with our men and children afterwards. Caleb had been crying the whole time we were running and he was asking for me. I thought it was really sweet that he wanted his mummy and then when Seth asked why he wanted me, he told him, "I want Laura!" so he was crying for me because he knew that Laura was with me and he wanted her! Cheeky little monkey! We tried to get Caleb to throw the paint at us, but he didn't want to get dirty! So we just threw the rest of what we had at each other!

It was so much fun running that race. My towels and sports bra are now dyed pink and it took three lots of shampoo to get all of the colour out of my hair but I would definitely do it again, maybe with my boys as well when they are a bit older.