Color My Disappointment Purple!

All season, made a big deal about running with purple hair if I met my $8,500 fundraising goal. I made a big announcement about it. I set up a “Purpleometer” to track progress. I wrote a poem about running with purple hair when I met my goal. But when push came to shove, and it came time to do it, I couldn’t perform!

I got up at 3AM on Saturday, June 26, prepared to turn purple. I shaved, put on deodorant, and applied TNT temporary tattoos to both cheeks and to my shoulders. Then I took a deep breath and dove into my Color Fiend Deep Purple dye packets. It was pretty much a fiasco. I applied the first packet with the tiny comb. I switched to a regular comb. A few blobs of purple arched through the air and landed on the property of the hotel. I cleaned these up. I put on gloves and opened a second packet, and started rubbing it in with my fingers. I opened a third packet – my hair was still not purple! I grimaced and opened the fourth and last packet, combing in the deep purple color. I then used a hair dryer for a good 20 minutes. At the end, my hair looks slicked back and darker, and some of the gray was lavender, and there was a hint of purple in other areas, but that was it.

I hate to admit defeat but I was out of time and out of purple dye. I went downstairs and joined the rest of the team. “Oh cool tattoos!” one of the young women on the team explained. No comments on the “purple” hair. “How about the purple hair?” I asked hopefully. “Oh, yeah, it is a hint of purple, isn't it? Well, that is cool, too,” she said.

Sometimes our best laid plans end up in disappointment. My 2010 Seattle purple hair attempt will go down as one of these. But I won’t hang my head in shame. The attempt was pure, and the race was still fun. Maybe my purple headband at least got noticed, but I doubt that my hair did, even though I ran without my white TNT hat for the first race ever!