The weather wasn't so good though. I woke up and it was raining, and I couldn't be bothered. I messaged my friend, who was the complete opposite to me and seemed rather excited, and I told her how grumpy I was.
As she picked me up I walked to the car, in the rain, with a grumpy look on my face. We stopped for a coffee, and I stayed grumpy.
When we finally got to Ipswich my mood was lifted, mainly by the disappearance of the rain and also due to the bickering and banter between Christine and her husband on where to park.
Finding the perfect space in a residential street (woo on not having to pay for a car park!), we walked the short journey from the car to Chantry Park. As we walked across the grassy area we could hear music from the MC and went straight over to sign in.
We were quite surprised that there was no real process to signing in, no codes were checked, no one would have known if we both had the exact same form.
We were handed our goodie bags and then went over and got ourselves ready.
We planned to wear the Run or Dye tshirts which were provided in the goodie bag, placed our numbers on our tops and got ready for the warm up.
The warm up was hosted by the Townsend Twins. This was more fun that a proper warm up. We expected more stretches but still, we did have a laugh.
Then it was time to run. We had planned to have more fun with this 5k than at Race for Life the previous week. However, we actually ended up jogging at this one more than walking...well, after the 2k toilet break *achem* (thank goodness for it being at a park and there being a toilet block there!)
The experience of having dye thrown over you is weird and it's hard to know how to react as you go past each colour station. As we neared the finish line we could tell which of the colour stations was the most generous, and Christine had a lovely orange face after getting smacked in the face by a handful of dye.
Passing the finish line we once again had that great feeling of achieving something! We managed to navigate through the crowd and grabbed a can of Zeo, which was really refreshing after a 5k jog in warm weather!
Zeo sponsored us to enter the race and to attend the colour festival afterwards.
The colour festival was AMAZING. And is something EVERYONE should experience. A dance troupe hosted the beginning, inviting the crowd to join in, we enjoyed this a lot more than the earlier warm up act and again just had so much fun.
And then, it got messy. With dye packets being opened and thrown around, handfuls of dye thrown out from the boxes in the stage, as well as a wind blower machine also blowing dye into the crowd. It truly was fantastic and made me feel silly for being in a grump that morning!
As we walked away I felt really emotional, more for the experience than anything else. I had such a wonderful time, and was sad it was over. But, soppy alert, loved that I had created more happy memories with my best friend.
If you ever get the chance to be involved in something like this, then DO IT. You won't regret it.
Thank you so much Zeo for giving us the opportunity to experience this. And thank you to Christine's husband for the photos.
