3.10686 miles!

There's got to be few more annoying people at fun runs than the "data junkies". Like me.

This year, my family (me, hubby and my boys: 8 and 6) ran our second Color Fun Run.  We ran a Color Me Rad last year, and the inaugural Splash of Color this year.  If you check out my review from last year, you'll see it was, well... not a precision machine.  I thought it was just that "brand" of race, but it seems to be all of these untimed fun runs.

A few things that got to me this year:



Parking wasn't well labeled, there was a cone that said RUN and an arrow pointing straight ahead and smaller sign with an arrow point to the right that said Park.  The traffic was polite and did a nice loop to get back on track.

Check in was at the finish line. The starting line was through the parking lot, down a curved street that wasn't closed to traffic. No announcements or directions.

No water stops along the course.  They did give us the heads up about this in the email and we carried our own, which was fine.  I did notice a lot of people didn't read the email, because I heard a lot of "when we get to the water stop" comments.  But, with so many kids running it, and a lot of those kids wiping out (one road was pocked marked with potholes, a few kids ended up with skinned knees and elbows), having a water stop around half way stocked with band-aids might be a good idea next year.

My biggest issue: the race was 2.33 miles.  Not even close to a 5K.  This is really where I'm starting to get frustrated.  You're doing the beginner runner community a huge disservice by shorting the course.  There were a lot of people who were out there for their very first 5K.  You could see the nervous excitement in their eyes.  And when they cross the finish line and check their iPhones they see it was almost a full mile short!  This was supposed to be their first 5K, but only it wasn't.  Just change the name of your run. Call it "Fun Run" instead of "5K".  Then you can make it any distance you want!

I understand my $45 per adult and $25 per child goes to the "experience".  Yes, the tech tees are actually pretty cool, and it's awesome to run with my boys and not have to worry about the clock (what's that old adage about results living on the internet forever?), but I'm kind of excited about the day when my boys are ready to run in a race instead of a fun run.  Give them $20 and maybe some of it goes to a good cause, you get a cotton tee shirt if you're lucky, then run 3.1 miles and get excited when you see the clock ticking at the finish line.

My boys post-run.
Despite all my complaining, this is what made the race totally worth the cost and all of the petty annoyances.

That being said, I loved running with my boys.  Even better, I loved passing people while running with my boys.  Brian was awesome and did not want to take a walking break! He ran the 2.33 miles in 30:58 without walking the entire time.  Pete's more like me, and he took his walking breaks and finished only about a minutes behind Brian and I.

Now back to worrying about actual timed races.  I've got a 10K in two weeks!