This past weekend, I ran the Color Me Rad race, which was held out in Brockton, MA. When I first signed up for the race, I didn’t really pay attention to details because if I had, I am not sure I would have signed up for a race out there! Brockton is certainly NOT Boston, but luckily, Lauren’s friend Amy offered to drive us.  Since it had been a crazy busy week for me, I felt completely unprepared for the race for every aspect except for the actual running part. I am typically a very organized (Type A, for sure) person who has all the details and times and locations mapped out and planned for accordingly, but for this race I just didn’t have the time or energy to be on top of it.  Many thanks to Lauren for picking up our race bibs and packets and to Amy for offering to drive!

Friday night I packed my bag, laid out my clothes and sneakers and set my alarm for 6:45 on Saturday morning. Thanks to some blog readers, I learned to wear my crapiest workout clothes (ie: no Lulu and definitely not my newest pair of running sneakers!) and bring a twel for the ride home. My roommate was gracious enough to give me a white tank as I wanted to shamelessly promote my blog decorate it with a “Burpees to Bubbly” note. For putting this together in the car en route to the race, I don’t think it came out half bad!

I deleted the photo by accident and only have a copy from Instagram, but I couldn’t copy and paste it, so click on this link to see it: Color Me Rad Shirt

We got to Brockton just around 8am, which was plenty of time before our 9am heat started. What do you do with extra time before a race? Take pictures, of course! 😉

It turns out that they were not very strict about runners starting in the specific heat they were assigned to, which was awesome for us since we were there and ready to go much before 9am.  After pre-race necessities were completed (finding safety pins, going to the bathroom, taking pictures), we got in line to start with the 8:30 heat.

Not long after we started the race, we went through the first color station. This station was throwing powder color at us- look how crazy it is to see all the color floating in the air! Not gonna lie- I was a little weirded out by it!

I didn’t end up getting much color on me at this station, but it totally got me in the spirit of the color run theme of the race!

I can’t say that the course of the race was overly scenic or fun; we ran partly through the fair grounds and then around a huge parking lot which actually made for the most boring race course I’ve ever run on. Luckily, there were so many walkers/runners that I was able to do lots of people watching to keep me entertained! Even though the course wasn’t interesting, the race flew by! Before I knew it, we were rounding the last bend and were handed powder color packets to open as we crossed the finish line!

Post race, we had to take the obligatory “after” photos. I didn’t get overly covered in color, but I can’t say I was that mad about it! While we walked to our meeting spot, I checked out some of the vendors. I was pleasantly surprised with how many vendors made an appearance at the race! Naked Juice, Vita Coco, and larabar (just to name a few) were all there so me, being the hoarder that I can be when free stuff is given away, grabbed everything I could grab! 🙂

After we finished getting our swag, we walked back to the car, tried to remove whatever paint-covered clothing we could and headed back to Boston. I can’t speak for the other girls, but I had a hell of a time getting the color off my skin when I took a shower! I had to use an intense loofa and I am pretty sure I ended up scraping off the first couple layers of my skin in order to finally get the color to come off! No wonder why I got a little bit of a sunburn when I laid out by the pool later that day; I took off all my base tan skin layers! 😉

Overall, I thought this was a really fun race! It was the first race I’ve ever run where there wasn’t a timer set up! For me, being the Type A, numbers-focused person that I am, this was a foreign concept! Why would I run “for fun” rather than trying to get a new PR (personal record)?!

Well, I quickly realized that it was because this race WAS for fun and that I would look silly going out there and giving it my all. With that being said, I tried to soak it all in and enjoy the experience and I think I did a great job at that! I ran without focusing on my watch to track my speed, without my music to keep me going and without feeling like I had to keep pushing myself since the clock was running. And, you know what? It made for a very enjoyable race!! It was a nice change to go out there with a carefree running attitude and it was fun getting to run with friends! Many thanks to Lauren and Amy for doing the race with me- what’s the next adventure going to be?

Questions for you: Have you ever run a color run? What’s the best “fun run” you’ve ever done? Do you like tracking your time while running or do you prefer running for fun?

I want to sign up for a Spartan or Warrior Dash- has anyone done one of those??? Which would you suggest?