Don't let life be the pits!

Rainbow mud. That’s how I would describe my appearance on Sunday morning after a few friends and I, along with 7500 other people, completed The Color Run 5k downtown. Now, this wasn’t so much a race as it was a colorful street party. For those of you who haven’t heard of The Color Run, the gist of it is that you start the run wearing a clean white shirt, and along the course, you get gently pummeled with colored powder; at the end, you look like something out of Willy Wonka.

I can say with total certainty that I’ve never had so much fun in a race! Our team–for PEACH’s sake–had one objective: get as colorful as possible. To accomplish this, we rolled around in color that had fallen to the ground at each station. STOP. DROP. ROLL. COLOR. It just goes to show, getting exercise and being active doesn’t have to be a drag. While this certainly wasn’t an intense cardio work-out, jogging and laughing at the same time with friends make for very fun physical activity.

You don’t have to be an Ironman competitor to complete a race. There are lots of runs and walks still left this summer and fall that would be great for the whole family to do, or if you’ve never completed a race before, there’s no better time than now to push yourself and do one! You can look at a fairly comprehensive list of races in and around Louisville here. There are a number of races for charity, so you can support a good cause and get in some exercise at the same time. Maybe you can even get a team together and make silly shirts for the race (“Don’t let life be the pits” was our team motto for The Color Run). However you go about it, I would highly recommend doing a race. Whether you run, walk, or do some combo of both, you’re going to feel great after you cross that finish line.