Why this year's Color Run was indeed the happiest 5K

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." (Hebrews 12:1)

After my revision surgery on April 22, I was told I needed to wait 4-6 weeks before I could do any exercise that gets my heart rate up, and limit any heavy lifting. (This was torturous as the weather got nicer and I wanted to get out and enjoy it!)

But guess what?... I made it! We made it! I'm past the mark, and I'm able to exercise again and enjoy life to its fullest! WAH-HOO!

In the parking lot of Frontier Field, where the race started.
7am on a Saturday morning!

To celebrate this milestone, Michael and I signed up for the Rochester Color Run 5K. If you are unfamiliar with this event, read about it here. Basically, it started because some folks wanted to get people out and exercising by making it really fun. So they thought, "What could be more fun than blasting music throughout the city, starting and ending with a dance party, throwing color on people as they run so they end up covered in various colors from head to toe? While we're at it, why not make the whole thing a fundraiser for a great cause?" And the Color Run was born. (If you are interested, the link above shows where others are - maybe there is one in your area!) It is not a timed race, so as to encourage anyone and everyone to participate. Hence, you see everyone from kids (running and in strollers), to people being wheeled in wheelchairs, to young and clearly athletic people, to very heavy people who are trying to get out and move more. You can sign up as a team (I was on a team of pastors and friends of the Genesee Finger Lakes Conference - aka my colleagues), and often teams have some unifying costume they wear - a certain color tutu, for example, or silly socks, or wacky hair. Basically, the sillier and more festive you look for this event, the better. The swag you get when you register includes colored headbands, a white shirt with the logo, a wristband, and a couple temporary tattoos you can wear on the big day, but many people go further than this.

Michael and I have been wanting to do some 5Ks since last year, but then my diagnosis prevented us from doing any. This year, this fun event happened to fall four and a half weeks after my final surgery, making it the perfect celebration for the end of cancer. In addition, the charity for this year's Color Run supported was Teens Living With Cancer, which also made this a beautifully full circle event for me, since being a teen living with cancer is where this journey started for me.

So we woke up early on this bright spring day (after having been out late at a concert the night before - ugh!), and put on our color run T-shirts. I donned a pink bandana in honor of the disease I beat twice. And we made our way to the start line with a flood of white shirts and colored accents. We found some of our team and chatted while we waited for the race to start.

In front of Frontier Field (home of the Rochester Redwings). That inflated arch is the start line.

We had both made the goal to start the race off running, and see how far we got. So we set an easy pace and made our way down the streets of Rochester. The first color station came quickly - blue!

Then came yellow...

As we kept running, we found that we could, in fact, keep running. To our shock, even though we were tired, we were able to keep moving and never had to walk the whole time! It helped that every station had people smiling and cheering and throwing color on us. It's a nice pick-me-up. :) Here I am approaching PINK...

And Michael after pink...

We were so proud of ourselves for running the whole thing. Even by the end, my muscles were sore (from lack of strenuous use for at least a month), but I wasn't out of breath.

As I mentioned above, there is a dance party at the end. They hand out extra color packets and everyone throws them at once and it is quite a rush! I found my friend Justin, and we went in together, while Michael and his sensitive allergies stayed back and took this video:

And here is the result: Justin and me after the color bomb experience:

I remember the day that I walked out of my last day of radiation treatment for Hodgkin's Disease. There was a sense of accomplishment. There was satisfaction. There was joy and contentment. When cancer is treated with surgery, you don't get that feeling, because when you wake up from surgery you are groggy and can barely say the words, "I'm cancer-free!" let alone remember that you said them 30 minutes later. And then of course there is the recovery - when you return home especially after a major surgery like a mastectomy, you feel sicker and more debilitated than you did when you went to the hospital. And the recovery is possibly long and painful, and there is not really a mark that says, "I am back to normal." My body still doesn't feel entirely normal, whatever that means anymore. 

But after running five kilometers beside my dear husband, who has been running this race with me for nearly two years, and then throwing color into the air and jumping up and down in a crowd of hundreds of people from all walks of life... I feel like I have arrived somewhere. I feel like if my body can do that, then I might just be able to say, "I'm healthy! I'm back!" 

So friends, I'm going to go ahead and say it... I'm cancer-free, better than ever, and ready to move on to more exciting things in life! Huzzah!

We made it!