The UV Splash Dash

I’m officially a fan of the fun runs. I’m still debating about whether I want to try to up my game and run longer distances at some point, but for now, a 5k is just long enough for me to feel like I’ve gotten a good workout, but I’m not fall-over exhausted at the end.

The race was held at a park across town and as I pulled into the parking lot for packet pickup an hour or so before the start time, the clouds rolled in and we had quite the downpour. Thankfully, the rain let up long enough for us to run in between showers!

Paul, my running buddy from the Grape Stomp, came down to run with me, which was a blast, as always. This guy is hilarious. He’s always up for an adventure and quite often just packs up his Jayco camper and hits the road, which is exactly what he did this night. He camped just outside of Tucson.

At packet pickup, we were each given a white UV Splash Dash t-shirt, our bib (which was officially lame…they all had the same number on them), a glow bracelet or necklace (not at all lame…glow stuff rocks), and a tootsie roll that was attached to one of the sponsor’s business cards. Random.

There was a DJ there who led the crowd in some electric sliding and cupid shuffling, which we obviously took part in. There was a guy dressed like Where’s Waldo that was sneaking around the crowd with a Super Soaker full of UV color that he sprayed on unsuspecting people. He was my favorite.

And I found a girl from my kickboxing class that was running the race with her friend, too.

And then, we were off! There was no timer running, which was probably a good thing, because it was hard to get a normal pace going. In the beginning of the race, there were so many people squeezing out of the starting line (in the dark, mind you) that it was just like being stuck in the middle of a herd of cattle. It got better as the race went on, but it still required some fancy maneuvering to get around strollers and lines of people blocking the path.

At each kilometer, they had big ol’ UV lights set up and they had volunteers that sprayed you with color. I was expecting the running in the dark thing to be more of a challenge, but it really wasn’t! My eyes adjusted and because it was all on the sidewalks in the park, we didn’t really have to worry about our footing.

I honestly have no idea how long it took us to run the course this time! I’m guessing it was a little less than 40 minutes, but my Nike+ app was being finicky, so we have no record of our actual speed.

And, honestly, it didn’t really matter! We danced. We ran. We glowed. We laughed.

And then they kicked us out of the park, because the lightning had gotten pretty fierce with another storm coming in.

So we went out to dinner with our new friends afterward!

The color washed out of my clothes really easily, but it definitely took a few showers and a lot of scrubbing to get the color off of my skin! I went to kickboxing class the next morning looking slightly diseased.

Totally worth it.

Every race that I run, I meet more people, which makes it all that much more fun to run. Running may be a solo sport, but if you let it, it sure brings people together!