Color Me Rad 5 k

I had so much fun volunteering at Color Me Rad this weekend! Color Me Rad is a 5k color run/walk where colored corn starch in powder or liquid form is thrown onto you at "color stations" along the course (typically every kilometer).

Friday night I made my way up to Madison to hang out with a friend, but then 6:30 in the morning came entirely too soon. Luckily I was pretty close to the Alliant Energy Center and was able to make it there by 7. Once parked I engaged in some light conversation with some other volunteers as we made our way to Willow Island. Once checked in we started to blow up beach balls for the event, and did some various tasks.  They started to split us up into our areas, but there wasn't anyone else there for "start line ropers" so I joined in with color station 1.

We walked down to our station and started our set-up of a plastic tarp, flags, and 25 pound boxes of powder color. We were set up fairly quickly and had some time to kill; so we started chatting amongst ourselves. I chatted with Brooke and Tierney; whom didn't have other friends at our station. There were also a pair of younger girls, a group of 3 friends, a mother/daughter pair, and our station set-up guy at the station.

After an hour of waiting it was finally event time. Shortly after 9 am the first wave of runners started to come through.  We had been told that there were about 8,000 runners, so be sure not to throw huge fist fulls out.  We were also told that there were going to be runners whom thought it was their goal to beat everyone, which there were, and it was pretty funny to see them run through.

Because we were the first color station we were busy! The crowd hadn't had a chance to spread out much yet, so when we got the waves of people we were grabbing color and throwing it on people as fast as we could! 10 minutes or so later the wave was through, and we had a few minutes to regroup and open more boxes of color. Even though we were practically covered in purple after our first wave we felt the need to throw more purple onto each other, and get our set up guy, as he looked too clean.

The waves kept coming from 9-10:15, and we continued to throw color and started to sweat causing our purple to split into blue and pink streaks on our faces. I looked pretty scary by the time all participants came through! After everyone had come through we started our clean-up and I headed out. I hadn't planned really well for throwing color, so I didn't have much in my car to contain the mess. I sat on a reusable bag, and scrubbed my face with antibacterial wipes, yet I still looked pretty silly! I even ventured to the mall to help my friend pick out glasses before she laughed at me and gave me her apartment keys to shower. 2 days later I still have a pink scalp, but it was definitely worth it.  I had the best time volunteering!