HAPPIEST 5K?

I’ve only ever run half marathons, 15ks, and 10ks (you can see my race log here). I’ve never run a 5k, particularly because they’re over in a flash after having dished out the registration fee, gotten up early, parked and braved the crowds, etc., so when I got the opportunity to try out The Color Run Denver, I jumped at the chance!

Here’s a recap.

THE MORNING OF

Michelle picked me up around 6:30 am so we’d have enough time to park at the Coors Field parking lot, check in, and get our bibs before the 8 am start. For any of the previous races I’ve run, this would’ve been smart. For The Color Run, it was far too early. We got there with plenty of time to spare.

After getting our numbers and our little bag of goodies, we brought them back to the car and then changed into our Color Run T-shirts before perusing the crowd.

At 7 am, they had a Zumba warm-up session:

We didn’t partake, but it looks like those ladies had a lot of fun. They also got the tutu memo that we must’ve overlooked!

In our bag of goodies came a couple of fun temporary tattoos, so of course we put them on.

Here I am flexing my happy muscles! We had an hour to spare, so we obviously took a lot of pictures.

As the time approached 8 am, people started heading towards the start line.

Little did we know, it would be another 15 minutes until we could run. They let people off in waves every 5-10 minutes or so. I’m guessing they do this so that the crowd doesn’t bottle-neck when they stop at the color stations along the run. To give you an idea of how this worked… Michelle and I were crossing the finish line as others were just crossing the start line. Oof!

Here we are, waiting patiently to get our run on.

To their credit, they played a lot of fun music and had guys on mics working to entertain and rev up the crowd. They even had bubbles!

While waiting to run, we found The True Winner of The Color Run, the guy above in the world’s most amazing T-Shirt.

THE ACTUAL RUN

Around 8:15 am, we were finally off! Almost everyone was walking, so we weaved in and out of people, running the whole time. Runners were, counter-intuitively, supposed to stay on the right of the route, but walkers didn’t make that so easy!

Upon approaching each color station (first was yellow, then pink, blue, green, etc.), participants lined up to get the chalk-y dust sprayed onto them by race attendants.

Michelle and I usually just ran through this, but even when we did stop to get an adequate amount of color on us, we were quite disappointed to notice what little color really stayed onto our clothes.

Here we are at the finish. We ran the not-even-a-5k (2.97 miles, at least according to my RunKeeper app) in 29:14, averaging about a 9:50 mile. The route was kind of lackluster, the energy was much lower than other races we’ve done, and the “color” was quite anticlimactic. All in all, though, we were happy to have experience something new and have gotten a nice little workout in to kick off the weekend!

 A FUN SIDE NOTE

Unrelated but also a great experience that day: After I came home and showered, I headed to Colorado Springs for the extras casting of the feature film to be shot in Colorado, “Our Souls at Night,” starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. I don’t know if they’ll cast me, but how fun would that be!?

This post is a part of the Weekend Snapshots link-up with HerHeartlandSoul.

HAVE YOU EVER DONE A COLOR RUN?