Find Your Stride with Finding Our Stride
Community Splash & Dash Walk/Run in Thetford, VT on May 31st
May 21, 2026
Sharon, Vt — “It’s for everyone.” So says Finding Our Stride’s executive director, Greg DeFrancis, as he leans into our conversation over coffee on a coolish morning in mid-May. Young, old, runners, walkers are all invited to join the inaugural Community Color Splash & Dash, an Upper Valley-wide event to be held at Thetford Academy on Sunday, May 31, 2026 at 304 Academy Road in Thetford Center, VT.
What’s a Community Color Splash & Dash? It’s an untimed fun run and a fun walk for people of all ages and abilities with an added twist of color. Which is to say that safe, non-toxic, colored powder will be playfully “splashed” on participants’ clothing at various stations along the course. Wear white or light-colored clothing and by the end of the dash, you’ll be sporting splashes of bright colors that can be easily washed off when you’re done. It’ll be a great day for photos! And you’ll find your stride along with a whole new rainbow of colors as you meet friends old and new.
Finding Our Stride (FOS) is a community non-profit with twenty-nine student teams at twenty-seven elementary schools hosting free FOS after-school programs around the greater Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont. From Windsor to Quechee, Claremont to Piermont, Newport to Lisbon, Canaan and Lebanon to Hartford and Fairlee, Finding Our Stride is dedicated to developing in children lifelong habits of physical activity to promote social-emotional learning, physical fitness, personal well-being, and community involvement. Think about kids developing skills like enthusiasm, teamwork, integrity, humility, fairness, gratitude, perseverance and self-control alongside one another. Plus, they’re keeping active which has physical and mental health benefits, too. That’s a lot rolled up into one organization whose reach is growing throughout schools and communities in New Hampshire and Vermont where after school programming can always use a boost.
As we drain the last of the coffee from our cups, FOS’s DeFrancis reminds me that this is all about “getting families outside having a great time being active and healthy—while, of course, raising awareness of Finding Our Stride and its work.”
Now, with its Community Color Splash & Dash, everyone is invited as Finding Our Stride extends a broad and warm invitation to participate in this new and exciting event. Plans are to make this at least an annual occurrence, with the potential for holding multiple Community Color Splash & Dash events each year. So, come on out and join the fun. You’ll be contributing as a “first-timer” and founding participant in what promises to be an active community gathering that will grow with the Upper Valley as our children grow, too.
Details can be found at this Community Color Spash & Dash link. It’s free for current Finding Our Stride runners and for Kids 5 and under. Otherwise, fees are: Adults - $30 for preregistration, $35 day of event; Ages 6-18 - $20, $25 day of event. Registration the day of the event is certainly possible, but a $5 late registration fee kicks in on Friday, May 29th at 5 pm, so register early. At the time of this writing there are already over one hundred registrants, with plenty of room to increase that number.
You’ll be part of a growing, enthusiastic, and exuberant group of people who will find the joy of movement with friends of all stripes — and plenty of colors thrown in, too!
Dave Celone writes from Sharon, VT, where he finds his stride everyday along trails and paths much like those that will welcome Community Color Splash & Dash participants at Thetford Academy on May 31st.