The color of fun

I ran one of the more unusual races I've ever run this morning -- The Color Run.The idea is, you run a 5K and at every kilometer, volunteers bomb you with dry paint. Well, it was actually dyed corn starch.
At the end of the race, your white shirt -- and anything else you happened to be wearing -- will be a riot of color.
My friend Nicole heard about this and we both signed up. The race sold out and there we were this morning with 10,000 of our closest friends getting color bombed.
Here we were at the start. Look how CLEAN we look!

Here we are waiting to start the race. Because there were 10,000 runners, the race organizers had the runners start in waves. To keep us all entertained, they threw a couple of beach balls into the crowd.

Nicole with the beach ball

Me with the beach ball

The race finally gets started in Piedmont Park in Atlanta.

At the start

The race course is around the park, mostly, and here we are at the first color bomb, which was yellow.

first kilometer was yellow

And there was this fellow, rather formally dressed, along the route.

Wearing your formal attire to a fun 5K

Just about at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, we got to the second kilometer color bomb, which was green.

Second kilometer color bomb green

I was starting to get pretty coated along this route. And keeping my camera, etc., under my T-shirt really didn't help. That corn starch powder was getting everywhere.

Third kilometer color bomb, pink!

 At the third kilometer, the color bomb was pink. On the loudspeakers was the song "I'm the Geek in Pink." This is where one volunteer coated my hair with the color dye, which, I'm sorry to say, has not washed out.

Getting more and more colorful

By now, Nicole and I have been separated for a few kilometers. I re-injured an old running injury last week and it is still bothering me, so I ended up walking a lot of this 5K. But honestly, it was very hard to run this race. This was not a race where you work to get a personal best. Too many people for that, and with all of the bottlenecks at the color stops, just impossible to run fast. Maybe since I couldn't run, that was the reason I found three pennies along the route! The pig got fed this week!

Fourth kilometer color bomb, purple!

At the finish, and final color bomb

 At the finish, we got our final dose of color, which is a packet we carried the whole way. Can you see the color dust on the left of this photo? People were throwing their color packets as they got to the finish. Mine was red.

At the finish, color me RED

I've completed the Color Run

Somewhat of a mess

How clean are we now?

 Nicole and I finally found one another at the end of the race. My car has colored dye in it, even though I brought towels  to sit on. I feel bad for those runners I talked to who forgot towels. Yikes.
I'm not sure I will run this messy race again next year, but I'm glad I did it this once.
After all, it was a very colorful run.