The Color Run 5k – San Francisco

This is like Holi except you run or walk with a bunch of people. Each station has a different colour that they throw on you. The course is pretty nice — you get to run through AT&T Park for part of it. There’s also a happiness wall where you can put up a sticky note about what makes you happy.
They gave us a nice fitting t-​shirt, headband and some fake tattoos. Unfortunately, the fake tattoos made me break out so if you have sensitive skin be careful.
At the end, there’s a dance party and they give you more colour to throw on others. This event is fun but like I said, it’s like a glorified Holi. You definitely need a shower by the end of the run.

Always such a fun time, the event planners do such a great job!!!
I always look forward to it and this time brought the kids, ages 9 & 17months. I’m not gonna lie the baby was all over the place emotionally with all the flying color, but next year I think will be when he really has a great time.
The best part is always the color countdown throws at the end!!!
In short, do it!!!

Color run felt like release and relieving for a fun Sunday!
They blocked the entire pier row to run and one gets splashed for each 1k passed through! You get to even stroll through At&t ballpark! It was as if I’m sprinting to happiness at the end of the rainbow for each splash that I got! I enjoyed it superbly!
There was music at the end of the rainbow to get splattered even more, one gets a medal when finished, food trucks congregating and bar snacks for munching.
I am glad that I finally made it out to color run SF and it couldn’t have been at a better place!

For some reason, I have an affinity for getting splattered with [edible…tho not tasty nor nutritious] paint. But… i’m still «iffy» about getting splattered with mud (such a wimp i know: P). maybe it’s the wide array of colors that paint can be. anywoo…
–fun concept, low-​key/​laxed run. (it’s not timed… at least not in the last 2x I ran it)
–pretty cool «after-​party» vibe at the end. must be all the inhalation of the edible colors: P
–kinda expensive as others have hinted towards… for a 5k at least.
–not the most scenic venue (i.e. around candlestick park parking lot… meh)
–volunteers were good (graciously passing out water and dousing us with color), cept… i wanted them to throw more color at me and that didn’t happen.
maybe when im not poor (totally my fault tho)/it changes venues (or did it already now?), i’ll do it again.

Start clean.
Finish dirty.
Do you like getting doused with colored powder? dancing to house music at the afterparty? getting free schwag? being surrounded by fun people of all ages (there were a lot of kids running with their parents!)
I’m not much of a runner and neither was my friend, but we both loved the idea of getting dirrttyy and dancing our butts off afterwards. That alone was worth it for the $ 40 price tag! (steep for a 5k, but it was my first! so splurge!)
The race was organized well: tons of volunteers at water and color stations, free Zico water, kind bars, fresh lemonade and food trucks to feed hungry mouths. Signs were clearly marked and parking was easy breezy for our 1PM run.
It was a sunny 70 degrees at Candlestick park with views of the bay! I was pretty spoiled on my first ever 5K. I’d do it all over again… but not sure if my bathroom would be so excited. My shower looked like a unicorn shitted rainbows in it. ;-)

Pros:
– 1pm race option (8am races are pure hell for this late riser)
– was definitely fun… colorful headbands & t-​shirts, after-​party, kids rolling on the ground to get more color on their white clothing…
– free parking that is close to the start or finish line (gotta love candlestick park)
Cons:
– route: you kinda curve around & re-​trace your steps…
– a day later, I’m still blowing blue & purple things out of my nose (sorry for the TMI, but that can’t be healthy…)
– $ 40 registration fee if you’re with a group, $ 50 otherwise. Very steep compared to other short runs
FYIs:
– put your cell phone in a zip lock bag if you’re going to carry it
– race isn’t timed, so more low-​key than other races I’ve participated in
– saw some people wearing goggles or tying t-​shirts around their nose/​mouth, so as not to inhale the powder… not a bad idea
– there is a combo of powder & liquid paint that you will be doused with
Fun way to get a 3-​mile jog in on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the city!

This is an event to do with your friends (when you are in your twenties). There is plenty of parking at Candlestick Park so don’t bother coming early. This race was moved to March 2014 so it was not that packed.
This race is not timed so most people jog it while having fun. Through the paint stations, people walk so you can get colored with corn starch. There are 5 stations — green, blue, pink, and purple. The yellow station was squirting colored water. The ground is mostly flat since you’re running around the perimeter of the park’s parking lot and through it.
The after party is ok. We left after taking some photos. I’m glad I did it since it was fun (our team of four had personalized t-​shirts) and the photos turned out great. Showering afterwards (twice) was a pain but eventually my body turned from blue to its normal color after some serious scrubbing (wear sunscreen or scrubbing will be painful).
I would recommend this for groups as a fun activity.

Did it today. It was fun and warm. Love the weather! Fun in the sun with my friends :) some people walked and some people ran. Great experience overall. Wish the bathrooms weren’t nasty though. If you love being outdoors you’ll love this event.

Oops I made an error — the email address was
not
! My apologies!!! And — if were possible to give them negative star I would!!! Shame on them!!!

Awesome vibe! Glad that I was able to go to the most recent Color Run in SF. Unicorn mascot, enthusiastic participants, good music, & tons of color packets… The party didn’t stop when I had to go (2PM), and that’s pretty solid for a morning 9AM 5k run!
The Color Run consists of four color stations (Yellow, Orange, Blue, and Pink) on the track, a water station, and boom the 5k ends before you want it to! Each station actually had a ton of volunteers with tons of colored powder. Hi fives all around.
Walking or running are both good for this 5k. Definitely a family friendly event, and plenty of moms brought their strollers and kids along! Great DJ and music, which kept people from going home early. The cornstarch colored powder was a bit unbearable during color bombing but it was too much fun to NOT do it! I kept my sunglasses on always since I was wearing contact lenses, so no drama.
If you plan to permanently stain your color run shirts with the colors, you might not want to overdo the colors (i.e. too much color bombing) since it rubs off into brown/​grey after awhile.
Only thing that sucked was traffic to there and parking! We got free side street parking but since we were a little bit late, a lot of them were taken on the street we were on. It was a fence jump away from the Color Run.
Definitely convinced me to do The Color Run again in San Jose!

awesome I had so much fun :) the staffs are so fun and pro I love them all and the dj was awesome :) over all I love it, I wud do this again if they are bck here in san jose

The color run was SO much fun!!! They say this is the happiest 5k on the planet and I totally agree! This is not your typical 5k foot race. It’s not timed so there’s no incentive to go fast. In fact you almost want to take your time so that the experience doesn’t end! At every kilometer, they throw colored powder at you — it’s colored cornstarch. First YELLOW! Then ORANGE!!! Next is BLUE! And then comes PINK!!! The last kilometer is just the finish line where tons of other color runners are there throwing colored powder and also the Color Run staff atop these towers that throw color too! At each color zone the volunteers throw color at you as you run by! It’s a crazy fun time! Everyone wears white (start with a blank canvas!) and by the end of 3.1 miles you will be a rainbow of colors!!! With registration, you get your bib, a white shirt, a headband, a colored powder packet, and a temporary tattoo!
At the end of the race, there was a dj playing fun music and more powder being thrown and people dancing. Color run staff were throwing out giveaways like fanny packs and drawstring backpacks and those plastic bracelets and such. It was like a rainbow dance party! There were food trucks to serve up food, including chairman bao and twisted chill.
Some people were wearing goggles and face masks. Others just had on sunglasses. Parking was free at Candlestick Park — make sure to bring towels or something to cover the seats inside your car so it doesn’t get stained with powder! Or bring a change of clothes, although you would have to change in the portapotty.
The first ever Color Run San Jose is 5÷18÷13 and the Color Run SF comes back in October. Keep checking their website to see where they’ll be next! Run happy!!!

I first heard about this last September and thought it was cool, but I didn’t really have the motivation to run this… Until some of my friends found out and really wanted to do it. So I signed up with them and then headed up to Candlestick Park when the day came.
It’s pretty expensive than a normal 5K race. I paid a VIP amount before it was selling to the general public (totally recommend signing up on their VIP list through their website to get updates to take advantage). I paid $ 40 with a coupon code (for team registration) and the general price was $ 50 for individuals, $ 45 for teams (in the way beginning). As the date comes closer, the prices shoot up to $ 60 for individuals, $ 55 for teams. It is better signing up for the team to get the slightly cheaper price. It needs to be four people or more. And there is a maximum for the amount of people signing up. I believe it was 10K people max, but I’m not too sure.
Parking was not that bad. It was actually free! :D There was a ton of parking about an hour before the race started so we got a spot fairly quickly. Once we were near the registration area, we were trying to find out the start line but couldn’t find it. It took us about half an hour but we only had to walk down the parking lot next to the stadium.
The race started in waves… We waited another 30 minutes after the race started for us to start. I just wanted to run! They give out a ton of free stuff while you’re waiting though. Especially at the start line. The DJs were dropping stuff like crazy and people were pooling on both sides of the start line to grab something. Come on! I just wanted to start running!
The course was awful. It’s just pretty much the parking lot. There is not scenery besides the bay that you could see when you started the race.
The race is not timed, so you can run or walk or do a combo or whatever. It’s nice that you can just have fun and not worry about beating a certain time.
I did start out running, but some of my friends hate running races so I didn’t get to run much. As we headed into the color zones, the cornstarch gets in through your nose, mouth, ears, etc. You get really covered with this stuff. Apparently it is non-​toxic, but I ended up getting acute bronchitis half a week after this. It was probably some virus but I am totally not ruling out that the cornstarch probably irritated my airways.
Anyway, once we finished, there was music and food trucks and other fun stuff. I really just wanted to shake all the cornstarch off my body. The website said that they have dryers to take the color stuff off, but I didn’t see ANY! False advertisement! There were also only a few handwashing stations and everything got too disgusting.
It took my friends and I quite a while to take it off. But it is good to pack some extra clothes, towels, baby wipes, etc. It helps a lot!
In the end, it was okay. I will not be doing this next year or the year after or the year after, etc. I am not a super party animal so all the music and partying that occurred at the end of the race was not really fun for me. All I wanted to do was shower and get all the color off!

I read about this run in an in-​flight magazine and decided that it looked really pretty and like a lot of fun. We rounded a group of friends together to sign up for the most colorful and happiest 5k ever.
Pros:
It WAS a lot of fun. After registering you get a cute t-​shirt, sweatband, and a packet of colored starch. It was great seeing everybody happy and colorful.
There was a great DJ at the end spinning fun music and everyone was dancing.
The poor awesome volunteers that stood at the different color zones ready to douse and pommel the runners with colored starch /​water — they were great.
Cons:
The course wasn’t very exciting. Granted, I’m sure they needed to plan the course somewhere they could power hose at the end, we basically ran along the water in the beginning (that was pretty nice) but then just looped back (uphill!) through a parking lot.
The poor awesome volunteers should have been given face masks. I’m sure they were sneezing blue/​green/​yellow/​pink for days.
It would have been nice to have handwashing stations so that you could eat without ingesting colored corn starch. I didn’t see any of the blowdry stations that was advertised in the website.

*Review as a volunteer*
I was so excited to learn that Team Challenge was chosen to be a designated charity for The Color Run. Team Challenge is an organization that helps people train for half marathons and now triathlons while raising money for Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.
They reached out to me to see if I’d be available to volunteer and I brought 2 friends along. We got there right at 8am, got a t-​shirt from the volunteer booth, and was assigned to host a VIP tent full of food. The task at hand was not really fun but it was cool to see all the people running get doused with colored powder!
Parking was super easy at Candlestick park and I would definitely run one of these in the near future.

It truly is the happiest 5k ever! At first, it’s a bit disorienting. People are either scattered or just standing in line without knowing what the line is for. A few people asked where the registration was. But once my friends and I figured out what was going on, it was smooth sailing from there!
I really like that there were food trucks representing! It’s not a San Francisco event without some sort of mobile food! And it was a good variety of cuisines as well.
And the dance party/​conga line at the end was a fantastic way to finish the race! I can’t wait to do it next year!

Ok… my apologies… this review is about a year late but… who cares… it’s for The Color Run… The HAPPIEST 5k in the world… and…it was just that.
When I first got wind of this colorful mess (in a good way) I was all over it. I marked my calendar for the date, I marked my calendar for the registration date, I dreamt about it. Imagine how I felt when the damn thing was sold out in a matters of minutes. I was PISSED!!! So pissed that I started to look around every other city so I can participate.
Luckily, the opened up more slots and my friends and I was able to get in.
So prior to the race, all participates who registered can pick up their bibs and swag bag at Candlestick Park. The race is literally around Candlestick park. When I got in the car and opened the swag bag there was a head band, wrist band, instructions and a little packet of power in it. My powder, my color :)
The day of the race I was so anxious. There was sooooooo many people there where all white and having the time of their lives and the damn race hadn’t even started yet. I was already happy!!!
Long story short… it goes a little something like this… every mile you get to, they throw a different color power on you. And when I say you will have powder everywhere, please be advised I mean EVERY WHERE!!! I had it in my mouth, eyes, nose, ears and even when I got home, it was in my VaJayJay… don’t ask me how.
Once you get over the initial shock of getting hit with the powder, my main mission after that is to get to the next mile mark for the next color.
At the end of the race, there’s this huge concert like party where you can have a ball and take tons of pictures.
I had the time of my life and it was the best race I’ve ever participated it.
Since this is a year old, I can say, I highly doubt I will be doing this race in 2013 because the folks of The Color Run must have lost their damn minds!!! The registration price is ridiculous now and it’s ashamed. You’re going to lose a lot of folks being greedy. It’s a 5K dammit… not a marathon :(