The Color Run l Manchester 5th July

After the drama of this year's Hull 10k I think I would be forgiven for never putting my trainers on again.

Not really. That would have made me the most ridiculous human alive.

Luckily for me I didn't really have a choice as many moons ago I had booked The Person and I into to do The Color Run in Manchester at the Etihad Stadium. Getting covered in paint in my favourite city? Erm yes please.

It isn't the cheapest of runs at £25 per person and I did hover for a second before making the payment but it turns out I don't think I've ever had as much fun on £25, not even when I was student and it was a vodka and coke for 80p on a Monday night in 5th Avenue.

Your £25 gets you your very own white t-shirt to run in, a white headband, a transfer tattoo and a kind of pointless poncho - in other words, all you need to be a super cool person.

I was excited to find out that Miss Pond was going to be running too - a trip to Manchester, getting covered in paint and meeting an Internet Friend in real life?! - too much my friends. Too much.

We almost didn't meet up as it turns out that trying to find one person in a crowd of 5,000 when every single person is wearing a white t-shirt is pretty much the most difficult thing on earth. Luckily I managed to spot a hand waving out of the top of the crowd and I buzzed my way through the crowd to find myself in an awesome group of runners (made up of ladies also known as The Lady Sybil, Katherine Sully, and Phat Cupcake) and actually really close to the start of the race.

This is not the place to try and aim for a PB, this is not the race to take yourselves super seriously, this is the place to have a bit of a run and generally enjoy yourself. This is why I was actually quite surprised at how much not fun some people seemed to be having. We made a pretty lively group and I was all for whooping and high five-ing fellow runners as we weaved past each other but some. people. were not up for that kind of shit. Weird. If you can't have fun at The Color Run I literally don't know where you can.

Knowing that roughly every kilometre you're going to get blasted by powdered paint makes running a hell of a lot easier and that first blast of pink was quite the shock. I'd heard people say that they didn't really get covered in paint at these kinds of runs but I have absolutely no idea how. We were head to foot covered in awesome pink colour.

In fact if there was only one piece of advice I could give you it is to say make really sure you don't breathe a lot of that paint in. Harmless it may be, but it is dust nonetheless, and if you have a pretty decent case of asthma I wouldn't say that this is the race for you.

I probably should have taken more photos, a lot of people were stopping after each stage to do that but as much as I wasn't trying to zoom around the whole course, I didn't want to get caught up in crazily massive crowds either. Sometimes, it's ok to not document every single moment of everything you're experiencing. My brain is doing a pretty good job of remembering for me.

There isn't any more to say really. You run, people throw paint at you, you finish, you throw more paint around and take a load of photos and dance about like a loon, you get on a tram back to the centre of Manchester.

If that doesn't make you want to join in I have no idea what will.

So I'll see you there next year, yeah?