Signing Up for Color Run Singapore

I am happy to report that I managed to sign up for a marathon! Not a full one, as I explained to my bloggy pal Kate, but just a 5k fun run called Color Run – the happiest 5K on the planet. Their official website explains:

The Color Run™, also known as the Happiest 5k on the Planet, is a unique paint race that celebrates healthiness, happiness, individuality, and giving back to the community. Less about your 10-minute-mile and more about having the time of your life, The Color Run is a five-kilometer, un-timed race in which thousands of participants are doused from head to toe in different colors at each kilometer. The fun continues at the finish line with a gigantic “Color Festival,” using more colored powder to create happiness and lasting memories, not to mention millions of vivid color combinations. Trust us, this is the best post-5k party on the planet!

I had first read about the color run from my bloggy pal Megan, who was the one who first started Weight Loss Wednesdays. When I read her describe it, I got so enamored by the idea of doing it too that I wished it would find its way to Singapore.

Well it finally did but it is so popular that it got sold out within the first 18 minutes or 3 hours (accounts vary) of its online launch. There was still a huge demand for tickets afterwards that they decided to sell more in the next weeks, but this time there was a catch – you couldn’t buy them online, but in person, at 10 am on a Saturday. Who wakes up that early on Saturdays? Normally not me, but since I was determined to get a ticket, I dragged myself out of bed and showed up 2 hours before the appointed opening time, knowing full well that with Singaporeans being Kiasu, there would be a line when I got there. I was right; there were about a hundred people in line already.

I joined the throng and sat down on the floor with my cup of Starbucks mocha and my ipad mini and settled down to read The Cuckoo’s Calling (a mystery novel penned by JK Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) to while away the two-hour wait.

There was an interesting crowd that day. There were lots of Singaporeans, of course. Most of them are fitness buffs anyway, so this was expected. I was wowed by several caucasian women baring sexy toned and tanned legs in cutoff jean shorts. Thinspiration!

The girl sitting next to me was quite a character. Fully tattooed arms peeked out of her lime green cotton top which she paired with loose orange pedal pants and moccasins covered in prints of faces and hands. While everybody else whiled away their time on gadgets of all sorts (the couple on the other side of me watched instagram videos on each other’s phones and wrote comments separately with lots and lots of heart emoticons), she had a unique pastime – knitting.

I was so fascinated because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone knit in real life before. Crocheting, yes, knitting, no. She eventually stopped when she saw me take out my ipad mini keyboard to start typing this blog (not knowing that she was going to be the subject) because she was so fascinated by what I was doing too and couldn’t help but ask me about it.

“Do you like that keyboard?” she asked. I said yes. I asked if she had an ipad mini. She confessed that she was planning to get one if she got a new job, as that was the only way to justify getting one. I told her to go for it. Just then, her boyfriend arrived with a cup of coffee for her, and I shifted a bit so he could sit beside her.

A few minutes before 10am, some organizers came around to hand out forms for us to fill up. I called  up my friend Nantoy to ask about some of his details. I was signing up for him too; each person in line was allowed to buy a maximum of 2 tickets. Then the lines started moving and we all got up off the floor and edged forward bit by bit until finally…

Now even though it’s just a fun run, I can’t just walk through this marathon the way I did my previous ones (there was that 3k walled city run where I ended up losing my voice because I was sick yet forced myself to run and the Milo 5k marathon), so I decided to “train” for it. How? By downloading the couchto5k app and doing the workouts by following the voice in my ear. When he says walk, I walk. When he says run, I run. When he says rob a bank, I rob a bank… no, wait.

I really do hope I find the determination to wake up early everyday to see this through!

How about you, have you ever joined the Color Run? Or any marathon, full or fun? Any tips for inexperienced people like me?

The first Color Run in Singapore happens on August 17 & 18 (I signed up for day 2). For more info about the event, please visit their website. I blogged about the event itself here.