Two weeks ago, hubby, daughter and I ran the Color Run in Nashville. My daughter has always wanted to run the Color Run, but hubby and I were not terribly crazy about the idea. But when I won a free race entry from Katie at From Ice Cream to Marathon, I knew I had to do it.
My daughter and I bought some white tulle to make tutu's for the race, and she had such a busy week before the race, I ended up making them both. The cat and static electricity made it an extremely challenging task, but I got it done. Truthfully, I should have bought more tulle, but for throwaway tutu's, they worked out just fine.
Hubby picked up our race packets the day before the race, and we received a messenger type bag, bracelet, tatoos, headband, and shirt. The shirt was definitely my favorite thing. It is so soft!
We awoke the morning of the race to cold rain. In hindsight, we should have brought ponchos or trash bags or something to keep us dry, but we didn't foresee how long we would be waiting to start. The race instructions said that people had from 9:00 - 10:20 to start, so we got to the starting line pretty close to 9. What we didn't anticipate was that they were staggering the start and we would be waiting in the rain for over an hour to start the race. We were freezing and wet, and couldn't wait to start running.
The massive crowds were in pretty good spirits, so it was still fun people watching, but a nice warm, sunny day would have been 100% better, obviously. We were so excited when we finally got to start, and were hoping that running would help us warm up pretty quickly. There were, however, more walkers than runners, so we would run for a while until we had to stop to walk and weave through the walkers. We still had fun though.
Because it was raining, I didn't bring my phone, so I don't have any pictures from during the race, except for a few proofs of race photos. We went through several color stations pretty quickly...yellow, purple, pink...The purple one was on a street where there were pretty tall buildings and no airflow, so I had to hold my breath to avoid breathing a bunch of the purple dust in, but the other stations weren't so bad. At the pink station, a girl put a ton of pink in my daughter's ponytail, and she loved that.
We got to the fourth color stop, blue, and sadly, they were completely out of color. We were no where near the back of the pack, so it seemed odd to me that they were already out of color. People were running their hands along the wet road to pick up some of the color that was on the street and then touching each other with it.
Before we knew it, we were at the finish line. The race was about a 1/2 mile short, but we were so cold and wet, we didn't care. We grabbed water and a kind bar, along with our packet of color for the finish line festival (which we ended up not using), and headed back to the car. Hubby's hands were so cold he couldn't even push the remote button to unlock the car.
All in all, it was fun, despite the bad weather. I think it was great to see so many people out there getting active and healthier, though we were shocked to see a walker in the race smoking as he went along. I think it would have been better if the start was more organized, and if they didn't run out of color, but other than that, we had a good time.
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