The Color Run

When I first heard about the colour run, I was bitterly disappointed that it was America only and not in Australia, but then I saw on the Colour Run Facebook Page, that The Color Run was coming to Australia.  I was super excited.

I waited patiently for entries to open.  And when they did, I registered.  Not only me but the entire family.  Yes it would have been fantastic to run the event, but I also thought that the kids would thoroughly enjoy it. Yes 5km is a bit far for some kids to walk, so I was expecting to carry my youngest for most of it (he also doesn’t like huge crowds). So I booked us all in.

The Happy Run

Yes the colour run is the happiest fun run on the planet. I loved the colour, and the atmosphere was great.  The positive energy from everyone was fantastic.

However, and yes here is my however there were elements of the event that I was disappointed in. (Please note this applies for Melbourne Australia, which was the 1st city to have the color run event.)

The course was set at Flemington Racecourse.  When I first saw the event map, I instantly thought “that doesn’t look like 5km”.  And I was right, I wore my garmin gps watch, and it came up short at just over 4km. You can see my garmin results here.

The organisers should have thought about opening up Flemington race course station for people to be able to get to the event directly. Yes it’s only 1km from the entrance to the racecourse from the closest train station (being Newmarket), however it is a special event, they should have thought about running a special train (like they do for the Melbourne Show, or even Melbourne Cup) for the event.

Now Flemington race course isn’t exactly central, not like Federation Square, so parking, well wow, what a nightmare. It took us 30 minutes to drive 500m, no joke!  It would have been better for them to state in the pre-event pack that part of the car park would be used as the course, so if you do want parking, get there by 8am! I was not impressed with this.

We chose to drove because I had 2 kids under 6.

I also only saw traffic control when we left the even, not before the event.  I thought that wasn’t really planned out.

My other gripes where that there were no Portaloo’s at or near the start line.

Where were they? AT the after party.  Which was a decent 200m away, which is all well and good, but people don’t want to give up their spot in the race line.  Have some toilets at least at the start line, because people do get pre race nerves.
The amount of people that raced off to the loo’s while on the race was amazing.  So yes a better toilet location or signage for toilets, cause I saw none.

And bins for that matter.  How hard is it to place a few bins at the start line. The amount of rubbish was shameful.  And to the poor volunteers who had to pick all that up.  Yeah, bins, they save the day really.  For me and for you.

And lastly – The start waves.  There was no organisation regarding the waves.  In all the big events I have done, there has always been some type of organisation with start waves.  The faster runners go first, and then the slower runners go last.

That was not the case with The Color Run. Waves went every 6 minutes, regardless if you were a runner or a walker.  It was keep left if you were walking, or right if you were running.  Stupid really. Because there were so many  people, people were scattered the whole width of the course, so if you were a runner, you would be weaving in and out regardless.

So this is my suggestion for wave times.

1. Under 20 mins 
2. Under 25 mins
3. Under 30 mins
4. Under 35 mins
5. Under 40 mins
6. Under 50 mins (these would be the walkers)
7. Over 60 mins

I don’t know how many waves their were.  We were in at least the 6th wave, and we were about halfway in the line up queue. But either way, this could have been better organised, it may have even made the event more enjoyable.

Either way those are my gripes, don’t get me wrong I did enjoy myself, and I loved the colour. In fact I wish they I got hit with more colour, not just the 4 colours they had.

Will I do it again? Maybe, I don’t know.  Either way, I had a good time, as did the kids.

Source: youtube.com via The Color Run on Pinterest