This weekend my sister, my boyfriend and I did the Color Me Rad 5K. I did the same color race in Philadelphia about a year ago with two of my best friends at Fairmount Park, so when I found out they were going to be in Bethlehem again in August, I jumped at the chance to sign up.

Packet Pickup

Picking up our bibs went super smoothly this time around as well, other than parking at the location (The Banana Factory in Bethlehem). I was a little bummed they were out of pink and purple sunglasses, but we were pretty late picking our stuff up. My family had intended to go to Musikfest after we picked stuff up, but since we were unable to find parking easily we opted to go home and relax and order pizza instead.

Race Day Morning and Shuttle

Pre-race and color free!

We had registered for the 9:20 wave, but given the Color Me Rad’s lack of real structure (our information said it was no problem if you missed your wave) we decided to leave as early as we could and jump into the first wave. We arrived at parking around 8:10, to be shuttled to the actual race location. It wasn’t too long of a wait to get on a shuttle.

Race Location

As soon as we arrived at Arts Quest, you could see color flying everywhere, but as soon as we stepped off the bus they’re wasn’t much direction as to how to get to the start location. It took a fair amount of meandering around the finish line to make our way to the start, but once we did, we joined the next wave and we were off in a crowd of people.

Right before the start.

The Race

It was kind of an icky and rainy day unfortunately, but I was determined to not let that bug me, we were off to a quick start, and ran about the first 3/4 mile before taking a break. Pretty much after that, it was too crowded to pick back up pace, but going through the various paint stations was a lot of fun (especially with the pink team who were more enthusiastic than the rest.) Although it was kind of icky, the course was fairly nice (my favorite part was running over a bridge) and although I had trouble finding a bathroom at the start/finish, there was one mid-course (as part of Musikfest)–which wasn’t a problem in the untimed race.

The downfalls? A huge crowd. Those who were trying to run were constantly trying to dodge people so much that we just gave up and walked until the finish.  I would have appreciated different waves for people who were planning on running versus those just walking. I was also extremely annoyed that most people left their empty water bottles alongside the bridge (the water stop was about 2 miles in right before we crossed the bridge for the second time) versus waiting until we crossed it, where there were a lot of recycling  containers. Given that most people were walking, I just found this kind of repulsive.

Blurry, but the side of the bridge was littered with water bottles.

A long wait to get back to our car was a little annoying as it started to rain (and because there was a whiny teenager in front of us)–but otherwise wasn’t too bad. Overall, while I don’t think I’ll be doing another color run (or other fun run) for a while, it was still a good time.

I’m pretty much always sticking my tongue out in photos.

What do you think of fun races?