Perfect Color Run
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Color Run was “perfect” said Tillsonburg’s Rebecca Moore after her first 5km Color Run.
"What a blast," said Tillsonburg's Mackenzie Lindee, looking forward to running the next one.
Promoters bill it as the “Happiest 5K on the Planet.”
There’s no winner and no one is timed. The only rule? Wear a white shirt and finish the run plastered in colour.
Saturday’s Color Run was the first in London, one of 100 cities hosting the event this year, after half that number took part in the inaugural runs last year.
About 7,500 people were expected to run, jog and walk past colour stations where other volunteers showered them with colourful powders that left their white T-shirts looking like an extra from a Skittle commercial.
Every kilometre, runners enter a colour zone where they’re hit with dyed cornstarch by volunteers armed with squirt bottles.
The Tara “Boom” Houston Children’s Foundation was selected by the for-profit Color Run as one of its charity organizations for the London run. It’s a St. Thomas-based group that raises money to help the families of terminally ill children.
Runners were also supporting One Run, a charity led by breast cancer survivor Theresa Carriere.
It was a colourful introduction to London for 20-year-old Shayna Lefko and countless others who came to the Western Fair District by the thousands to run in an event that was exploding in every hue of the rainbow.
Some ran, some jogged, some walked and a few even pushed strollers through a five-kilometre course where the object wasn’t winning – unless, of course, your objective was having fun.
“It was my first time in London and it was so fun – it was a blast,” said Lefko, who traveled from her home in Mississauga with her friend Brittney Farquhar, a student at Western University.
“We really wanted to do the run but Mississauga’s (Color Run) is during the school year,” Farquhar said.
- with files from Johnathan Sher