Participants just dye for chance to partake in fun-filled Color Run
Race times and running gear were replaced by cheeks smeared with coloured powder, blowing white foam, blow-up plastic uniforms and selfies galore at Saturday’s Color Run in Windsor.
“It’s definitely the happiest 5K in the world,” said Chris Uszynski, the race director. “We produce a lot of different 5K, 10K, half marathons, and without a doubt, this is the greatest experience, race in the world. There’s nothing like it. We motivate so many people off the couch, with their families. You’ll see babies being pushed by great-grandparents out here. It’s an amazing, amazing time.”
Around 4,000 participants ran or walked a five-kilometre riverfront course with five ‘colour zones.’ Along the way, they danced through and tossed coloured powder. By the end of the race, no one’s white Color Run shirt remained that way.
Uszynski said people get doused in different colours along the course and then arrive at Festival Plaza to get covered in more.
“It’s kind of like rekindling your childhood; just getting really disgusting and dirty and full of colour, and enjoying it with friends and family,” he said.
For people who might not be runners, Uszynski said the Color Run is a good way to test the waters. “As a race director who does this for a living, we kind of look at the Color Run as a gateway drug into our sport,” he said.
“If we can get you hooked into your first 5K — whether it’s the Color Run or something else — who knows? Maybe next you’ll do a 10K and a half marathon, and maybe you’ll be a marathon contender.”
Participants ranged from babies pushed in strollers to grandmothers. Last year’s Color Run was at nighttime, but this year’s organizers switched back to a daytime event to make sure little ones could participate.
“We’re back at it,” Uszynski said, as a family with several kids, some in strollers but all covered in colour, walked by. “You see all kinds of little ones on the course — and people in their 80s ... unbelievable.”
This year’s Color Run benefitted the Alzheimer Society of WindsorEssex County.
It was Natassia Novelletto’s first year doing the Color Run.
“I had friends and family who did it, and they told me, ‘You’d definitely love it,’ ” Novelletto said. “It’s such a joyful event: everyone’s so positive and everyone’s so spirited. It’s just an amazing event to be a part of.”
Novelletto — speaking while coated in coloured powder and soapy white foam from a soap machine — said doing the run with friends “makes it 10 times more fun.”
Next year, Novelletto said she’ll “definitely” be back.