Color Me Run - Hanoi

Yup, you read that right. Hanoi has a Color Me Run - AND I RAN IN IT!

Now, when I go to a race, I go to RUN. That however, was not the case for the rest of Hanoi. Let me tell you what happened.

My running crew and I get geared up and head to the course (it was a mid-day race). Once there, we see a FEW other foreigners in their gear, and TONS of Vietnamese in their Color Me Run shirts, with heels, hair/makeup done, jeans, etc. I then thought to myself "oh, they must be the spectators". Wrong again.

My Running Crew

So we line up at the starting line, but instead of starting the race: it's concert time! That's right. Instead of using our energy running, we first were supposed to jump around and learn a big group warm-up dance.

Concert Time?

After that, then we could start. We lined up, and they let us start in various groups. So once we were finally at the front and ready to go - it was running time!

Finally Lining Up

Ready to Run!

***If you've never done a color run, its a regular race but at certain intervals they throw powdered color on you, and by the end of the race you have gone from clean white to a rainbow. 

Upon the first "color spot" I saw it happening...a wall of Vietnamese people had stopped to take pictures, selfie, throw color. There was no way through. I was NOT putting up with it...I was here to RUN! So, I ran on the outside of the color spot, and kept going. I think I only ran through a total of 2 color spots - the yellow one and the red one. The rest were packed with the VN taking pix, so I ran around it.


Turns out, the race wasn't a 5k as advertised, but instead, a 3.6k. A little disappointing since I had been hoping for a 5k.

YAY WE FINISHED!

Group Shot of the Finishers!

I have never been in a race with so many walkers, photo-takers, SMOKERS, etc. It was DEF a bizarre experience. But, probably my fault for thinking it was actually be a RUN!

Xin Chao,
Apes