Color Run 5K. :)

I took part in Color Run (Adelaide) this year! It was heaps fun! :) The Color Run™ 5K is a 5km marathon that is less about speed and time and more about experiencing being colorful with  your family/friends. It happened on 19th May 2013 at Victoria Park Race Course. 


There were a couple of Race Rules that we had to abide by before the race and they were: 
Rule #1 All participants are welcome… fast, slow, runner, walker, old, and young.
Rule #2 White shirt dress code at the official start line and ready to roll!
Rule #3 Get completely covered in crazy coloured goodness at the finish festival.

Haha. Not really rules, except for #2. Anyway, I took part with a group of friends and our team name was #YOLO. You Only Live Once. :) If you participate in a team of >4 people, it costs $50 pp. The price was initially a put-off for me, but I understood on the days leading up to the race that a portion of the proceeds was actually going to charity as well! They were supporting Make-A-Wish® Australia. So I'm contributing to a worthy cause, getting some exercise and having fun with friends and the rest of Adelaide too! :P 

The white t-shirt as per Rule #2. :)

19th May 
I had to wake up fairly early for the run because it starts at 9am and getting there on a Sunday morning in Adelaide was pretty hard since buses only starts at 8.50am and it comes every hour. -.-" I had to take a bus that wasn't near my place, but thankfully my home-stay mum offered to send me to the bus stop, if not I have to walk 20 minutes! :O 

Prior to this run, I was supposed to practice beforehand because I've never run a full 5km before without stopping. But I didn't manage to get any practice as the week before, it was a very rainy week. :( So I was actually planning to walk the entire distance since 5km doesn't seem that bad! Haha. Compared to a 12km marathon that I did. :/ 

So, I took the bus down to the venue and I met with my friends! Put my belongings in the car and off we went to the running area! 

The area! Looking quite good! :) 

Approaching the start point! Woohoo! :D 

Let me explain a little bit more on how this color run works and how we will all end up being coloriffic-colourful! :) At every 1km, there is a colour zone, of which volunteers/staff will blitz a certain colour at the runners. Not to worry because the colours are a special recipe of magical colour dust (aka coloured cornflour) and 100% natural, safe and food-grade quality. :) 

Team #YOLO with our white tee-shirt as per Rule #2. :P

All of us started off this race in pretty good spirits. :D As I initially decide to walk so I was separate from the rest but we all caught up in the end. Lol. :) We started at an estimated time of 9.30am. :) 

The 1st Colour Zone: Orange!

The 2nd Colour Zone: Blue! :) 

No pictures of the 3rd Colour Zone which was Yellow, because my phone was running low on battery and I was afraid it would end before I ran the race finish! :(

Reaching the last station...and it's Pink! XD

The 4th Color Zone: Pink! :D

Look at all the colourful people! :) Oh and do you see the END? 

The final 200m or so. :) 

YAY! Team #YOLO has conquered 5km! :D

At the finishing line, we are each given a color packet each (there were blue, red, pink, yellow and purple colours) and my team then gathered into a circle and threw the different coloured powders onto each other! Hahaha. End result was a much colourful state than the above picture.

Absolutely colorful!! :P

And the aftermath of it all, as evidenced by my hair, shoes, socks and my entire outfit! And I RAN most of the way too! Surprise, surprise! :P I walked a fair bit too, but I actually did run! And I have aching and (VERY) sore muscles, for the next few days to prove it. Haha. And worst still, as it was a Sunday so I was out the whole day!! I only went back home at night! :/ I even went to church looking like a pretty artwork! Haha. Luckily I managed to wash most of the colour off my face, just that my hair and outfit was still pretty colourful. Lol.

 

Can you see the purple colour on my forehead? And the very colourful streak that's my hair parting? Lol. This was at night when I finally came home and before I took a shower! :) And that's my experience of running "the happiest 5km on planet"! :)

Live Below The Line. ♥

Hiiiii! ♥

I've just joined this pledge to sustain myself for under $2 a day and this is for 5 days! :O That comes up to $10 a week for 15 meals! Which roughly comes up to 0.60 per meal! :( It's a HUGE thing to me because I'm actually on a personal mission to gain weight!! And by eating meals that costs below $2 is pretty scary and seems quite impossible, especially that the average meal cost in Australia is $7-$10!! So in order to do this, I have to actually go on a diet cook my meals and buy cheap ingredients and stuff myself mostly on carbs and vegetables! Protein is quite expensive...so expensive foods like...

 

...Steak (beef) and lamb are food products that I can't afford to have during that week! And it actually got me thinking on how fortunate and blessed I am for living in a developed country, for being raised in a middle-income family, for having parents who spoiled me endlessly when I was young and I never had to worry about money at all! :) But after seeing my house mate and classmate join this pledge to raise funds for the 1.3 billion people in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), it actually started me thinking and being curious about what this whole thing is about! I didn't even want to try it at first because my first thought was that it's too daunting and troublesome. $5 is still a feasible amount a day, I think. But  $2!?!? 

And it's not $2 a meal! It's $2 A DAY! And it's winter now! It's freezing cold and I'm, most of the time, eating/snacking because winter makes me hungry! :( But after looking through the website and feeling so blessed about my circumstances, I've decided to do this to not only change my perspective but also to help raise funds for these people! :) Sorry about my ranting...the main point is that it seems quite impossible to achieve, but yet I (and many others) are all willing to give this a go! Why? Because we are hoping to raise some funds from this that will help to provide education to the people living in Cambodia and PNG! Education is one of the best ways to help them break out of this poverty cycle as most families rather sacrifice their children's education and use them to work in the fields or send them out to work to earn income, and their children grow up to be like their parents, and this is a repeated cycle! Almost all of these families do not have money to send their children to schools to pay the teachers' fees. Most students will even have to walk to their schools barefoot even though it's like 12356781256 km, but they are too poor to buy shoes or a bike! Help them to break this cycle! 

There are TWO ways that you can help! ;) 

1) Join me in this 1-week pledge to help raise funds for these people who don't have a choice but to live the way that they are living now. 

Go to Live Below the Line to join and select the country that you live in! This pledge is only available for those living in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. So if that's not you...

2) DONATE $$ to support this cause! :) 

$50 can be quite a lot of money to donate, especially since it's in AUD and I know the currency exchange may not be favourable to you! But you can donate any amount of money, really! Even $10 could mean a lot to these people! :) 

- If you wish to support me in this pledge, you can go to my profile page to do so! https://www.livebelowtheline.com.au/me/adelynkhoo. :) 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you! :) I will remember to keep posting on my progress on this pledge! Haha. I've somewhat created a meal timetable for this 1-week, starting May 6th - May 10th! It's 5 days! :O I'm feeling quite scared but I know that even if I feel hungry during that period, I have God sustaining me spiritually. And that's enough. ♥