Color Run- The Happiest 5K on Earth!

Last Saturday, a team of my co-workers, friends, and I participated in St. Petersburg's Color Run 5K.
Their tagline is "The Happiest 5K on Earth" and I can believe that. I've run in dozens upon dozens of races and challenges, and this was one of my favorite by far.

From The Color Run's website:
The Color Run™ 5k is a unique experience focused less on speed and more on crazy color fun with friends and family. Color runners come from all different ages, shapes, sizes, and speeds; but everyone toeing the start line has a blast. Whether you are a casual morning mall walker or an Olympic athlete, the 3 miles of The Color Run™ course will be the most memorable and colorful run of your life!

The Color Run is a national race series and is held in cities all over the country. Each kilometer of the event has you run through a designated Color Zone: yellow, orange, pink, or blue. Sporting all white, runners run through these zones (we kept bandanas over our mouths) as volunteers douse them with color- what is apparently dyed cornstarch. So it's powder- some of my friends actually thought they were going to throw paint on us- gross!

I was pretty conservative in my race day outfit- I wore the official race shirt, a pair of neon shorts I have from Target, white knee socks, Color Run sunglasses and a white sweatband. Some on my team donned tutus, though I saw people running in togas, shower caps on, robes, etc. People got skills in the creative department!

Here's a pre-race pic. And the guy in the middle is the Runicorn, the Color Run's mascot. As you can see, we are clean at this point.

The race was super organized, with a DJ at the start lines blasting tunes and keeping the crowd motivated. The downfall was it was super croweded, as the event sold out and more than 10,000 runners participated. There was no start clock, so as they promote on their site, this was more about fun than time. Good thing, because we had to basically shuffle step to the first Color Zone.

This pircute really doesn't do it justice, but our first zone was clearly pink. I think they kept this one a little tame to get runners acclimated to what we signed up for. Blue was MUCH more intense.

This is what is going on behind me in the Blue zone. Because my friends are nice people, they kindly let me know that I must have inhaled the blue, because my teeth were blue. I proceeded to attempt to correct the situation by washing my mouth out with water. NOT A HIGHLIGHT.

The next Color Zone was...

ORANGE. Orange was pretty crazy. I couldn't really take pictures running through the cloud, but the volunteers resembled Oompa Loompas, and there were even runners laying down in the sidewalk and making "Color Angels" in the orange powder on the ground. Oh and as you can see, as you move through the Color Zone, you are basically walking as everyone is actually trying to get Color on them.

The final zone was yellow- I was pretty proud of my overhead "profile pic" style picture in this Color Zone. Though I admit, I would be a pretty silly looking bank robber.

I felt like the run was super short, but my friends insisted if followed the same route as the Race for the Cure 5k- I guess I'm still in half marathon mode!

So we finish the race and several photo shoots ensued. Everyone was given a color packet before the race and was instructed to wait until the Color Party at the end of the race. My brother-in-law thought it would be HYSTERICAL to throw my own Color Party, so he went ahead and just dumped the entire packet on top of me.

Here's an after picture:

You can clearly see this was after the yellow incident with the BIL.

 

 

So as I mentioned, we had the Color Packets for the post-race Color Party, held every 5 minutes. Everyone gathers in a centralized area, the DJ gives a count down and everyone releases their Color Packets in the air- as if we weren't colored enough!

 

Here it is from afar- it was a really, really cool site.

Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?? Isn't it pretty?? (Side note- It was very foggy and overcast that day, wondering how the color would have looked in the Florida sunshine)

 

We took our places after this group cleared out of the Color Party area. I had pink in my packet and I was determined to make it RAIN!

 

 

 

This is what it looks like from inside the Color Party. Definitely a mess! I felt like I was at some sort of sober rave. An AWESOME sober rave. It was very exhilirating!

 

We went home shortly after this and worked on scrubbing off our color. I had put on the pre-cautionary sunscreen- they had advised that would cause it to wipe off easier. That tip worked like a chart. I had put coconut oil in my hair- again as they had advised- and that came out no problem as well, and I have highlights! My advice- read the packet they email you- they know what they are talking about! Another note- my camera is a normal point and shoot Canon Powershot here. I had no problems using it in the powder cloud.

 

Can't wait to sign up for next year!!