The Color Run: My Experience

The Color Run Hawaii

This past Saturday we did our second 5k run this year: The Color Run!  Claiming it's "the happiest 5k on the planet" it was so much fun! 
We actually stayed up really late the night before making our crayon inspired "District L" shirts.  We go there early, a little after 8:00 so we got to run in the first wave.  There were 8,000 participants and they were releasing the waves every 5-10 minutes.  I was happy to be in the first wave because at the starting line they were handing out free color run merchandise and extra color packets.  Unfortunately we didn't get anything because we weren't standing close enough to the front.
Overall the run itself was pretty easy.  The whole course ran through a residential area so it was paved the whole way.  There were 4 places on the course where the color zones were where volunteers throw color on you.  The actual color is in powder form so it does get in your eyes and mouth.  After the race was over, they had a color throw for all the finishers.  This was definitely a great finish to the race and it looked pretty cool watching it from afar (there are a bunch of pictures on the color run website). 

The only gripe I had about The Color Run was the parking and the traffic.  From the time we got off the freeway in Kapolei it took us about 40 minutes to actually park the car.  Traffic was so bad!  No one was there to direct cars and people were just parking anywhere, so it felt really disorganized.  A lot of people I knew actually had to park really far and walk a long way just to get to the start line.  Even though they have us a map of places to park, I felt like with 8,000 runners, it wasn't nearly enough.  The parking was free which was nice, but hopefully if they do it again next year, it will be better.
The color actually washes out pretty easily.  You can pretty much dust it off since it's powder.  Before I showered, I took a lot of it off with makeup remover and it came right off.  
Overall, it was a really fun experience and I highly recommend doing it!  I would definitely do it again next year!