Grams Made It - 5K

If you've ever clicked on Grams Weight Loss above, then you know my story. If you haven't, you should go read it. In a nutshell, I had gastric bypass surgery in 2006 and lost around 125 pounds. Although I've never lost all my excess weight, I've been successful in keeping off the weight that I did lose. This has required a drastic change in lifestyle, not the least of which is exercising.

The exercise has been a continuing challenge. At first it was hard just because my body hurt. My knees had been abused by carrying around all that excess weight and they were not happy about my new penchant for using them for exercise. But my knees and I persevered.

Grandad was very supportive and he needed to lose a few pounds too, so we started a walking regimen. We were up to walking two to three miles at least three times a week when we were sidelined by Grandad's heart problems. You can read more about that here and here.  After his many procedures, we tried several times to start walking again, but he just could not recover enough to get back to it. For a long time he couldn't handle walking one block. I didn't get back to walking on my own, for many reasons. In addition to multiple trips every week to one doctor or another, I was juggling every single thing that needed to be done around the house ... every ... single ... thing. I simply did not have the energy or fortitude to exercise.

Then, a couple of months ago, a friend posted on Facebook that she was going to do the Color Me Rad 5K in Corpus Christi and invited me to join her. At first I kind of laughed. She is a runner and I am most definitely not. I thought about it for a few days, then I sent the Color Me Rad people an email and asked if they welcome walkers as well as runners. I got a prompt response that walkers were indeed welcome. I started to talk about it with some friends and family and we decided to do it.

Katy signed us up as Team Better Halves. If you are not familiar with Color Me Rad, here's what their web site says about it:

Start out as clean as a newborn babe, and throughout the run, you'll coat your chaffing thighs with Color Bombs of blue, green, pink, purple, and yellow until your face, shirt, and body come out silkscreened like a tie-dyed hippy on the other side.

Each section of the run adds a new explosion of color to your clean, painter’s palate until you cross the finish line into a final blitzkrieg of color.

 Here are our before and after photos.

Mary Lou (my next-door neighbor), Grams, Princess E, & Katy

Saturday was the most gloriously beautiful day you can imagine. We could not have asked for better weather or a more beautiful place to walk. We walked from Whataburger Field through Heritage Park and then down Shoreline Drive to the Lawrence Street T-Head and back.

Photo in extreme lower left is us crossing the finish line. Bottom right is the post-race celebration.

I must say, we had a blast. I never knew that runners (and walkers) were so much fun. We started at the back of the final wave and finished very near the end. I can walk 5K, but I'm not fast.

Here are a few more photos to show you what I mean when I say people were having fun.

I believe they said that the young lady in the wedding dress was celebrating her divorce. There were several people who actually got down in the street and rolled around in the color. The woman in the pink shorts was celebrating her birthday. And, yes, that is a man wearing a tutu. There were several.

It was a great experience. I especially enjoyed sharing it with Princess E and Katy. Princess E and I did our first 5K together on the same day. I hope it's only the beginning of a healthy lifestyle for both of us.