celebrating Mother’s Day with a colorful little 5k
7 years ago I was living in Delhi during their festival of Holi. It’s basically a holiday where you throw colored dye powder on your friends/family/strangers and use water balloons or water guns to spray colorful painted water on passerbys. It’s like dying Easter eggs, except without the eggs (and it’s a lot messier!). Because I was a single white woman in the city, it was advised that I stay indoors during Holi, since some rif raff target tourists and throw rocks in balloons or other such nonsense. So I stayed indoors and watched kids playing Holi from my balcony. I felt like I was missing all the fun and wanted to someday get my chance at it!
My good friend, and former (twice!) co-worker Tabbi and I (and her roomate) formed a Color Run team back in…I dunno…February (when I was still running consistently), becuase we thought it looked like a ton of fun. Who wouldn’t want to run through powdered dye and get all colorfully messy? Added that it was on Mother’s Day, I thought I’d GO FOR IT! As a celebration of spring and being a mother and taking some time for myself. Also, a good chance to redeem that Holi festival with a little bit…safer…of a celebration!
We started off with a few clean pics (haha, pun intended!!) of us hanging out, jumping off things, you know…the usual. And then the 5k started. I was disappointed that we had to run about 1/2 a mile to get to the first color burst station, but once we got there it was so much fun! The order was yellow, orange, pink and then blue! Blue was by far my favorite, because by that time we had become Color Runegades and weren’t playing by the rules…we just grabbed a handful of powdered dye from the barrels (instead of letting the color attendants spray us) and doused ourselves. We weren’t dinking around anymore, we wanted there to be COLOR EVERYWHERE!
My ankles are sore from jumping and running. I’m tired from getting up early, but am glad that I did it! While I’m not sure I would sign up again (is it a once in a lifetime event maybe?), I am really glad that I did it! It was a fun way to celebrate spring and Mother’s Day and fitness.
boof & monk-monk 