Sunday, November 4, 2012

The Color Run

Ryan and I did The Color Run yesterday. It was BY FAR the best 5K we have run! It was soooo much fun! If you don't know what it is or haven't heard of it before, below is a quick recap:

What is The Color Run™?
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!
How does it work?
The Color Run™ event pretty much has TWO SIMPLE rules: 1)  White shirts (any mostly white T will work great) mandatory at the start line.  And 2) color plastered EVERYTHING at the finish!  Runner/walkers begin the 5k at the start line like a brand new pristine coloring book. By the end, they look like they fell into a Willy Wonka… tie dyed… vat of colored goodness. We are the creators of an all new paint race phenomena!
What is the Color?
Each kilometer of the event is associated with a designated color: yellow, orange, pink, or blue.  As the runners/walkers reach the Kilometer COLOR Zones, they are blitzed by our volunteers, sponsors, and staff with COLOR.   All products are 100% natural and safe.  You can eat the stuff if you’d like (we have tried it and don’t suggest it, it is surprisingly high in calories and leaves a chalky aftertaste).  See the diagram below for the COLOR ZONE specifics.  Of course, we save the best for last, ending the race with a color extravaganza of epic proportions.

The San Diego race was the biggest one yet - close to 30,000 people! It was INSANE! Friday night we went down to San Diego to pick up our race packets and got a sense of how many people were going to be there. The lines for the packets were wrapping AROUND the building - I would say at least 45 minutes wait.


The race was to be held at Qualcomm Stadium (where the Chargers play). They had warned that we should expect game day type traffic and to get there early. The race itself was at 9am (they actually had two races - one at 9am, which we had signed up for and one at 1:30pm). We ended up leaving our place around 6:45am and getting down to San Diego around 7:15am. We actually beat the rush and were able to get into the parking lot and get a great spot with little trouble at all. We relaxed in the car for about 45 minutes before heading out into the lot.

As you know, you are supposed to wear ALL WHITE (that way the color is more noticable), which meant Ryan needed to get some white pants - I know, can you believe it, he didn't have any, hehe. We ended up finding him a cheap pair of WOMENS white sweatpants at Walmart that he cut into shorts.


We made our way to the race area around 8:10am or so (most of the people there at that time were picking up their bibs and getting registered still). There weren't too many people by the start, so we used this time to take some pre-race pictures and get a little stretching in.



The closer it got to 9am, the more people you could see filling in the parking lot. They explained that they would let us out in waves (thankfully we were in the first wave), making sure that there wasn't too much of a hold up at the color stations.


The color stations that we went through were Pink @ 1K, Yellow @ 2K, Orange @ 3K, Blue @ 4K and then the COLOR FEST at the end! I tried to take pictures after most of the color areas, but it was difficult trying to get my phone protected in my running belt and not get it covered in color.






Ryan and I ended up beating our time from last week (it was actually Ryan's fastest 5K yet, even though it wasn't timed). I think it was probably because the color stations were pretty consistent throughout the course and we were having such a good time that you spent less time focusing on running and more time just having a blast.




And the party at the end was SUPER fun! In your race packets they give you an extra bag of color to throw at the end. Everyone (that had finished at that point - don't worry, they do it every 15 minutes or so, that way you can definitely get in on at least one) gathers, they count down, and then you throw the color.





We threw our color during the first party and then we stuck around for the second one so that I could get a little video of it. Once it starts settling it just looks like a big dust cloud, but if you watch the very beginning, you can see each of the individual colors - SOOOO AWESOME!!





If there is one in your area, I would DEFINITELY recommend signing up! It is NOT a serious race, it's not timed, you don't get a medal, but man, it really reminds you WHY we should be running - BECAUSE IT IS A BLAST!!

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