The Color Run- Tips

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I made a New Year’s Resolution way back in the beginning of this ol’ year of 2012…If you are invited to do something.  Do it.  Unless you have a legitimate excuse.  New Girl premiere.  Not legit.  Work. Legit.

Why this resolution?  Because I am 110% an introvert.  And good at math.  People suck energy out of me.  I don’t want it to be this way.  But it is.  I needed an extra push to get me out of the house.  Luckily most of my friends are extroverts so this resolution works out nicely.

When one of my favorite people in life called me in May and told me that I needed to sign up for The Color Run in Des Moines in October, I did it.  After some hesitation.  Maybe I’ll have something important going on in October.  What if it’s cold?  What is I don’t train enough?  It is a 5K.  I can totally just sign up later if needed.  My friend swore to me that it would sell out fast and I needed to do it.  She was right.

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So. Much. Fun.

We started the day in our nice and clean white shirts.  We being Nate’s sister (Lisa), one of my favorite people in the world (Melissa) and myself.

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It was 44 degrees at 1:00PM.  There were 27,000 people racing.  You know, the entire state of Iowa.  I don’t do cold or crowds and yet I still had fun.  I think the massive amount of people helped raise the air temperature a bit.

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We were released in waves of 1000.  So many people.  Obviously cool things need to keep coming to Iowa because we come out of the woodwork for this stuff.

At each kilometer were splashed with powder.  The powder is colored corn starch.  Completely safe.  This is what the first kilometer color site looked like.  Ooo, orangey.

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Oh hey, Nate! Thanks for being our personal photographer.

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The blue was really pretty.  As was the race course.

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As were we after a couple of kilometers of The Color Run.

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We ran jogged most of the 5K.  There were so many people that it would have been extremely hard to run the entire race.  I’d say about 70% of people walked the whole thing.  If you want a serious 5K, The Color Run probably isn’t your best bet.  We walked through each color station.  The people that ran through the stations had very little color on them at the end.  What fun is that?

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At the end there is a big ol’ explosion of color.  At the beginning of the race you are given a packet of color to save until the end and then there is a countdown to throw the color in the air.  Very cool.

Color-Run-Animation

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At the end we took a bunch of nerdy photos…

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Moral of this story…introverts, get out of your house!!

I do have some tips for those planning on running The Color Run or pondering it.

  • If The Color Run is coming to your city…or state…do it!!
  • Sign up for the first wave if possible.  There is so much anticipation of what is to come. If you’re in the second wave you already see how the first runners look, what the end color explosion looks like, etc.
  • If you live in Iowa, have many different white shirts options.  I am still freezing.  I will not be warm again until June 2013.
  • You many notice bandanas in the pictures.  There were quite helpful on reducing the amount of corn starch inhaled.
  • Have your husband photograph. 
  • Wear sunglasses.  I can only imagine how much fun corn starch to the eye is.
  • I mentioned before that most people walked.  Anyone can do this.  There were even kids in strollers….most were screaming sad screams though…so there’s that.

Have you ran The Color Run?  Do you plan to?  Any fellow introverts trying to make it amongst the energy sucking extroverts?