The many colors of Hannah. And a wedding.

Where do I even begin? Well, I am a red head, naturally, a rare breed. But like many other people in the world I get bored with my hair. When it is the same color you see every day it tends to look dull and boring to me. A lot of my friends cannot comprehend this because I am a red head. To me, it’s just like being any other color, also I am a girl. I change my mind by the second. Here, is a small-ish montage of my many hair....things.....

 This is what happened recently. I haven’t done a thing to my hair since early summer where I added some blonde ombre to it, just to make it a little more light for summer. Well as you can imagine, I got bored, and as I was looking around on pinterest I found this color I fell deeply in love with. They called it cherry cola, I was all over that.

I sent the picture to my hairdresser and made the appointment. Her name is Caitlin(Kelly) Bruscoe, If you live in the Western Mass area, go see her, she is amazing. Currently she’s working out of SuzannAndre Salon in Wilbraham. Everyone I showed it to was looking at me like I was crazy, mostly I think because of some of my previous hair choices. But I was determined nonetheless to have this color. Well the results were and are amazing, I have never gotten this many compliments on my hair, and I just love it.

Being 25 now I feel like I need to start looking a little more adult, and this totally helps. People yes still think I am 18, but at least I feel like I look a little more mature. I got it done just in time for this amazing wedding we went to, and I felt like a million bucks. The wedding was BEAUTIFUL. It was like being in a pinterest board!! Here are a few photos.

Dirt And Glitter, Mud, Color and Beer.

I realize that I neglected my blog over the summer/fall. And there were 3 events that I feel need to be chronicled, namely the Warrior Dash, Color Me Rad, and Rugged Maniac.

To tell you about them I have to tell you about last year when we did Color Me Rad for the first time. 

I do not and have not ever claimed to be athletic, a runner, or to enjoy any sort of exercise in my life. Ever. So when a coworker told me about a 5k her children and her were going to do I really didn't give it a second thought. However when she kept bringing it up and showed me a video of what it was, my interest was peaked and I got it into my head to get a group of my friends, some who are big into exercise and health and others who just like me were novice to the whole running 5k thing. 

The premise of the race is for you to wear white, run a little over 3 miles and every kilometer you run though a paint station and get pelted with powdered (corn starch) paint, sprayed with colored water and generally have a great time getting messy with your friends. Sounded just like my kinda thing. And it so happened to be AWESOME. Some of us ran, a few of us "fast walked" the whole thing together, running through, rolling through, doing anything we could to get as colored as possible. After the race there is a big party of people throwing color bombs every 15 minutes or so. It's a big explosion of color and it's just amazing to experience. When we left we went back to our hotel room and destroyed the place trying to get clean. There was color in places I didn't know could get colored. All in all we were all glad at the end that we had done it and were all psyched to do it again.

(My hubby and I after the race. Notice the sea of colorful people behind us.)

Which leads us to this year. 

This year I was determined to get in shape, I wanted to start working out regularly and start feeling better about myself. I figured, if we had some goals it would keep us (my husband and i) motivated and on track. Needless to say, that didn't really work out so well, but that's not part of this story!

I've had a few friends who have done these mud races, where much like CMR, it is a 5k, only instead of getting colorful you get muddy and have to overcome different obsiticals. There was a groupon for the Rugged Maniac, which was scheduled for September, and we also signed up for the Warrior Dash in June, as well as CMR again the same weekend in September as rugged. I had started a personal trainer in March and thought I was well on my way to beasting it though the race. Well race day came and Caleb and I, with bffl Kate tagging along for moral support and to hold our stuff headed out to Barre,Ma to a farm where the race was to take place. The different heats (groups of people runnig the race) had started at 8am, we got there for about 2pm, so by the time we got into the course it was well muddy and trecked through by everyone else. I have to say I thought I was ready for it, but like I mentioned earlier, I do not run. At all. Now add to this, mud. Not just mud. No. MUD. Mud up to your kneecaps, in some places up to your mid thigh. Then imagine this, for a whole mile, in the woods, branches and roots and rocks all surrounded by, you guessed it, mud. About a mile in you a slanted wall that you have to climb up and over, there is no rope or plank to help you, just a mud covered slanted wall. After about 10 or so tries I got up and over it. Next 2 walls up to my chest that you have to jump up and over. Followed by tires to run through, hay to climb over, a 2 story wall with a rope to climb up and over (the only one I couldn't do) trenches to climb in, a cargo net wall to climb sideways, fire to jump over, all with mud to run through in between, another cargo net to climb up and over and lastly a giant mud trench to wade through underneath barbed wire. This is actually a great video of the whole thing if you wanna see it. We made it through, not as well as I had hoped, but we did it! And I am glad that we did. It was defiantly an awesome experience.

Our before and after photo. 

I forgot to mention, it was about 90 degrees that day, if not hotter. You get rewarded at the end with a medal (cool bottle opener on a ribbon) and a free beer, it was only a coors light but let me Tell you after an hour and a half of mud trecking it is the best beer I've ever had. 

After we finished the race I was not feeling very confident in myself when it came to doing Rugged later in the year, but as the summer went on I kept up with my training and tried to incorporate more cardio and running into my workout so I wouldn't totally fail at the race. Well September came, and on the 4th I came down with a extremely bad cold that turned into bronchitis/laryenitis, I lost my voice for 3 full days, and was totally out of commission for 2 full weeks. My respitory system took a huge hit, since whenever I get sick like that I have asthma and have to use an inhaler just when I walk up stairs never mind running 3 miles+. 

Race day one came, it was our 2nd time doing CMR. I was nervous as anything just hoping my lungs wouldn't give out. The race started off with a guy in a bunny costume who had t-shirts, and if you could catch the bunny you got to keep a shirt. Well, my husband ran as fast as he possibly could, and was the first person to catch the bunny and got a shirt for me, but in the process tore his hamstring. I tired running got a bit with my other bffl, Angelica. Well about 10 mintues into this, my lungs, were so unhappy with me, so I waited for Caleb to catch up with me and we walked the rest of the race. The color stations were not as crazy as last year and over all the vibe was different, and although we had a lot of fun, it did not compare to last years race. 

Epic finish line high five.

 So at this point, i was even MORE nervous for Rugged the next day, not only was it running again, but it was littered with obsiticals, where WD only had about 10 or so obsiticals to go over, RM had "more than 18" as the website stated. Check out this guys video of all the obsiticals, it was pretty awesome. I made it throught ALL the obsiticals! The only ones that made me nervous were the trench jumps and the balance beams, mostly because i did not want to fall into the 6 foot trenches. I got my finger ripped open in the tubes because my finger got caught under the rope, and someone crawling behind me yanked on it. Ooooo that hurt. While there was a lot of mud, it was not as much as WD, but believe me, there was plenty! We finished the race in about an hour, which for a bunch of people who had never done this before, a girl with bum lungs, and a guy with a torn quad, i would say we did pretty good! Once again it was one of the best experiences of my life, and we are definately going to do it again next year 100% At the end of the race we were rewareded again with a free beer.

 So if for nothing else, you should run the race for that. Just let me warn you, these events are not for the faint of heart, or anyone who is afraid of getting bruised, bloody, scraped and muddy. I will say though, if I can do it, anybody can, and it is totally worth it all. Till next time!