Run or Dye 5K

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

When the alarm went off at 6am this morning I couldn’t stop telling myself ”oh no, this was a bad idea…”. But I’m glad to say that it turned out I was really happy I had to leave the house early on a Saturday morning. I was a little bit nervous about the running because I hate running and haven’t even worked out in months!

I picked up Lovisa and we got there at 8, an hour before the event started. We waited in the car for a while because it was so cold. When I was driving to Lovisa it was 35F at its coldest and a new symbol showed in the car, I think it was like a snowflake. That is like 1C! So that explains why I also saw frost in the grass next to the road. This is California! It was a very beautiful morning though. The morning haze was so beautiful in the morning sun. No clouds and the silhouettes of the trees in the haze/sun were amazing so I had to pull the car over and take pictures. This morning felt like a Swedish fall morning.

We stood in the check in line for a long time and met up with two of Lovisa’s friends I’ve never met before. When we were first in line we realized that the check-in was for people who didn’t pick up the package yesterday. So unnecessary. So we placed ourselves in the line for the race. They released like 500-700 people every five minutes and right before we started racing, everyone threw their bags full of different powder colors in the air and everyone looked like neon rainbows after. And right when we started there was a color checkpoint where volunteers threw yellow color on everyone. Later on they had white, green and pink. I was afraid that we wouldn’t get so much color on us, but we sure did. We had color everywhere! I got a really big green dot right on my nose at the green checkpoint.

The first kilometer or so we ran, but then we all got tired and walked the rest of the way. It took us about an hour to finish.

After the race there was like a stage with music and people working there, throwing color bags to us. And after a countdown everyone threw the colors in the air and that was so cool. I wish I could have taken a photo of it but my phone would probably have died of color poisoning if I tried. Even if I was careful it still got a lot of color on it. But it was easily washed off.

After the race we went to IHOP (International House of Pancakes) for some brunch. That was also my goodbye to the place. I love it, but for some weird (and good) reason I haven’t been there so often. Today I had a regular combo, consisting of two slices of bacon, hash browns, scrambled egg and Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Thos pancakes were amazing. The chips felt like they were roasted and it was just so good! Super unhealthy and it was food for two days normally, but it was the last time so it was okay.

Back home and threw all my clothes in the washing machine and myself in the shower. The color was indeed easily washed off and I’m clean again.

The best thing about today must have been the weather. Even if it was freezing in the morning it was above 70F and probably like 80F in the sun. So amazing and today’s December 14^th.

When I took my sunglasses from my purse this morning they were broken and I looked in vain after the tiny tiny screw that held the thing on the side to the middle glass thing. So I reached for my inner engineering skills and came up with this solution. It worked perfectly fine! When I came home and lifted a long sleeved t-shirt I haven’t used in a week, that tiny tiny screw fell out of it. Isn’t that weird? Now my sunglalsses are working as they should again :). Before the run… … After the run.