The Tokyo Color Run - March 15, 2014

This past Saturday I ran my first race in a very long while. It was the Tokyo color run, which is in fact, not a race. Beforehand I was worried about being able to run the distance at any sort of speed. I was worried about embarrassing myself. It turns out all my worrying was for naught. I'll get to that later.

The color run is a fun run with two rules:

1. Start the race wearing white

2. Finish the race covered in color

I did just that:

It's a really bad picture, but I was clean before I started.

Then I ran the race. We didn't actually start at the start line, because we didn't get there in time. Instead, we joined in about 100 m later. 

The first colour station we reached was blue. Before we got there I had fun stag leaping and cart wheeling my way. I also did some running. Most people were just walking.

At the blue station, I twirled around and got blue everywhere, including in my mouth. Bleh.

By this time a group of us had broken away from the original group, they were too slow for us. I wanted to stay together, but it was difficult to do so.

The next colour station was yellow. On our my way down to the yellow station, I was running and slapping high fives the whole way. It was really fun. And very un-Japanese. Why do I say that? Usually everyone is really quiet and they stay in their own little worlds. There is no talking, yelling at or touching strangers, at least not without a healthy dose of alcohol. But the color run is fun, and it brought out the fun in others :)

After yellow, the next colour station was green. I think this was a very poor colour selection. Blue + yellow = green and the next colour station was green. After green, I was decidedly green.

The final colour station, right before the finish, was pink! My favourite! I think it was a great way to end the race. I would have preferred purple or red, but I was just happy to get colourful. After the pink station, we raced to the end. It was really fun. 

At the finish line they gave us wet wipes, water and more colour powder! I wondered about the colour powder, but then I realized there was pretty much a rave going on past the finish line. There was a stage set up, a DJ playing dub step music and hundreds of people dancing/jumping. The music would build up and build up and then finally explode and everyone would cheer, start jumping, and throwing their colour powder into the air. It was amazing to see. 

After the dancing I was incredibly colourful. It was gross, and everything was kind of melting together and turning green. So, rule 2? I followed it to a T.

You can see the colour in my teeth!

Surprisingly, a lot of Japanese people asked to take photos with us. I looked like a monster, maybe that's why.

So why didn't I have to worry? Well hardly anyone ran, and the people I ran with were not faster than me. And I'm faster than I was before. Maybe thanks to futsal. And of course, most importantly it was a fun run, so there were no time chips or race clocks. Also, cheating was allowed and many people cut corners or hopped fences.

It was fun, but transportation was poorly organized. They didn't organize any shuttles and recommended taking a taxi to the running place as a viable option... Sigh. I wouldn't do it again, but I had fun doing it this time.