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A colourful way to help save lives!

Malise, Peter and Andrew
Malise, Peter and Andrew celebrate after five kilometres – and quite a lot of coloured powder!

The running season is in full swing and, of course, Save the Children staff and supporters are getting involved. As ever, Supporter Services are getting in on the action!

This includes me – even though, besides a few vague school memories of the annual 5k runs in the local forest, my running history is nearly non-existent.

I haven’t run since and, apart from the occasional yoga class, I practise a strict non-exercise regime.

So I’m not really sure why I signed up to do the Colour Run in June for Save the Children as soon registrations opened in February!

Motivation

The Colour Run’s a 5k untimed race which celebrates a fun approach to healthiness – participants are doused in coloured powder at each kilometre.

Straight away I recognised the unique fundraising opportunity for someone like me who tends to only wear black.

The first day of training was horrible. I hadn’t even managed 3k and I was still trying to catch my breath half an hour after I’d finished.

I quickly figured that I had to find a route that would somehow continuously grab my attention and a running partner who would name and shame me if I failed to keep up with my running schedule.

I managed to get my friend Peter and my partner Andrew involved. Although Peter managed to convince me to meet for a run one bank-holiday weekend at 6am, we quickly found out that the after-work run was a more humane training approach!

The big day and beyond

The Jubilee line was packed with people wearing sweatbands, face glitter and white T-shirts.

Peter and Andrew had gone for a more ‘basic’ look, but I’d chosen to pay tribute to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust painting a big pink lightning bolt on my face.

The weather was perfect and when we reached Wembley Park, there were already thousands of very excited people ready to run five very happy kilometres. And so we did.

It was great to see people of all ages and from all walks of life getting involved. Teenagers, parents, grown-ups, kids and toddlers in their buggies were all doing their bit.

Music was playing at each of the five colour stations and the lovely Colour Run volunteers made sure that both colour powder and high-fives were generously distributed.

Not only was everyone having fun, but the majority were also supporting a great cause doing so. Save the Children has a minimum sponsorship of £50 for this event but I managed to raise a total of £75.

I chose to allocate the money I’d raised to our general funds so that the money goes where it’s needed most.

I can only recommend signing up for the Colour Run. As it is an untimed and relatively short run, it’s a great introduction to charitable sports events. I’m already getting excited about registering for my first 10k run for Save the Children.

Fancy getting involved? Check out this range of runs, walks on our fundraising pages.

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