It’s true. I cheated at the Colour Run this weekend. My friend and I just went to all the stalls, had paint thrown at us, ran through the final purple cloud, took pictures with the entertainment, got dusted off by the Vanish people and left…without doing the race. True story. Here’s why:
WHY I CHEATED AT THE COLOUR RUN
Ok. So I was off sick for 2 days last week, but I really thought I’d be well enough to at least walk the Colour Run. I got a parking fairly close by around 9:15am and was ampt. Well! We walked from pillar to post and couldn’t find directions to anything anywhere! There were TONS of people all dressed up with their numbers and t-shirts (I still don’t understand how they were dressed that way where they were) and the staff were all super friendly and lovely but had no idea where we were meant to go.
Eventually we found our way to the club house and it was chaos! The staff here were very helpful though and we were given our t-shirts and numbers but yoh! It was crazy. They had some lovely snacks, but we thought we’d leave them for after the race. When we returned later everything had been packed up! HA!
When we went outside to stand in the queue for the race to start at 10am, we were keen and perky. At 10:30am though, we were still in the queue, still not moving, still nothing. 11:00am still in the queue, still not moving, still nothing. At this stage loads of people just started throwing their paint in the sky, eating chips on a stick, getting smoothies. In my mind I was thinking, “Ahhhh…do you really wanna eat deep-fried chips before a 5km run?!”
Eventually people started moving forward and slowly by slowly the runners were filtering through. Well by 11:30am I just couldn’t any more. I was already starting to feel ill again, I was getting sun burnt, so I just ran…ran away!
The bottom line is that the Colour Run is about charity. It’s about making a difference. And truth be told, I walked away feeling rather annoyed for having stood around for 90 mins not achieving anything. But all the food stalls were fresh, people were friendly, the music was perky and the activations were really fun! Nashua had a photobooth if you signed up to their mailing list. And, as I mentioned, Vanish was there with leaf blowers so you could go get blown off HAHA!
After we’d been around all the activations, gotten something to drink there was STILL a queue waiting to join the race! So considering I wasn’t feeling very well, I’m glad we left (I went home and had a 3 hour sleep so I really wasn’t well enough).
When we were leaving, we ran through the ending and got purple powder on us anyway, we left happy. And it’s all for a good cause:
DOING IT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS
Headline sponsor Capitec Bank, shares The Color Run’s passion for social upliftment and donated R10 from each ticket sold to Atlantis High School, which lacks resources. The funds raised will be used to assist with educator development and school based support in mathematics, science and business studies. Capitec Bank spokesperson Charl Nel comments,
“We chose the Atlantis High School from the list of schools provided by the Adopt-A-School foundation. Their need for educator development and school based support in mathematics, science and business studies are in line with what Capitec works to achieve through their CSI. They believe that this will lead to an improved matric pass rate, and in turn, job creation and economic growth, as a result supporting communities in which we serve. Capitec and The Color Run were able to raise R100 000 for Atlantis High School.”
The Colour Run happens every year and will now be moving to Pretoria. Visit their website for more information and participate if you can. And take my advice, go REALLY early so you can be at the front of the race queue so that you can actually run at 10am. Let’s make a difference together (even if you’re a quitter like I am!).
