Throwback Thursday: The Color Run

There's a trend on social media called "Throwback Thursday". I have decided that since this blog wasn't around when I first started running (and through some really fun races) I'm going to do a couple of Throwbacks of my own.

The first one is the Color Run last June.

Runicorn!

This was the biggest race I had done to date, and the only one not organized by local charities. I was so impressed at packet pick up how organized and how smoothly things went!

 We arrived later in the day so there weren't that many people there, but the whole thing is like a party. There's music blasting, and games to play, and you can even meet their mascot, a unicorn.

All the race goodies

They give you a white shirt and encourage you to wear it in the race. You also get to pick out what color packet you want to throw in the end celebration. I chose purple, of course. There are also temporary tattoos to wear to make you look extra fierce as you they pelt you with color. You also get a white headband to wear, but I thought it looked ridiculous on me so I chose not to wear it.

The next morning we started off all nice and clean. We had bought white shirts at Old Navy to wear because they are cheap and we didn't want to mess up the nice ones they gave us. We put on our pink tutus and temporary tattoos and headed to the start.

The race goes in waves, and if you ever have the opportunity to run a Color Run, get towards the beginning wave. When we finished there were still a lot of people waiting to start and it was really hot that day. I can't imagine waiting that long in the heat.

On the course there are a total of 4 color stations if I remember correctly. Pink, blue, orange, and yellow corn starch are squirted at runners through bottles. My favorite station was the blue one because most of the volunteers were younger kids and they were very generous with their color!

At times the course gets really crowded so you can't really run, but since I was doing it with my mom I had planned on walking anyway. I have no clue what our time was because it isn't officially timed, but it was over way too fast due to all the fun we were having. If they made half marathon color runs, I would probably set a PR!

At the end everyone throws their color packets up in one final color explosion. This is done every 15 minutes to accommodate all the finishers. Note to self next time I do this: keep my mouth closed. The dust tastes like chalk and it isn't fun.

The "after" photos were so much fun to take! Both of us were super colorful, and I had it in my mouth and hair and just about every crevice of my body.

It took about 30 minutes to scrub all that off. Mainly the purple that was in my hair:

This was one of the most fun races I did last year and I can't wait to do it again in April with my mom. Color Run Kaleidoscope Tour 2014: here we come!