Color Run Miami: Get Your Jog On in a Cornucopia of Color

Being a grown-up is pretty lame. Go to work, run errands, pay bills. The daily grind is so boooooring. So who doesn't love an opportunity to let your kid flag fly?

Enter the Color Run, a 5K of straight-up silliness that ends in a cornucopia of chromacity. You haven't seen so many hues since your finger-painting days.

This stateside-famous event is all about entertainment: just a fun-for-all jaunt in which participants get pelted with a rainbow of "magical color dust." (No, really, that is exactly how it's described at the website.) You can run, walk, or skip the 3.1 miles. And there's no timing, no pressure, no overly serious athletes, or other buzzkills.

does the color-bombing work? Each kilometer along the race course has

its own hue. 1K is yellow, 2K is blue, 3K is green, 4K is pink, and the

5K finish is dubbed a "Color Extravaganza." As the participants hit each

zone, they're blitzed with color by a waiting crowd. Organizers

describe the color-pelting process as "like getting into a powdered

sugar food fight." More colorful, but not as tasty.

runners can register as individuals ($45 till July 1) or in sweet teams

of four or more ($40 till July 1). In addition to the discounts, registering as a team has the added bonus of letting you come up with your own custom team name (think

"the Rainbow Brites"). Team members can run/walk/jump/skip together or

separately, and are tasked with getting each other as kaleidoscopic as

can be.

For the cost of registration, you score a custom Color Run race

shirt, a bag of "color" (don't snort it, party people), a race number, a sweet sweat band, and the fuzzy feeling of having donated to a local charity. There'll also be swag from run sponsors.

Wearing

white is nearly the only requirement to participate. And that's just a no-brainer -- don't you want a one-of-a-kind,

better-than-tie-dye original getup at the end? Sure you do. Your goal should be to come out of this race looking like Robin

Williams after the food fight scene in Hook.

Dogs

aren't welcome, which is a bummer -- who wouldn't love to see a rainbow-colored

Chihuahua? But kids in running strollers are. Don't worry, the

powdered stuff is non-toxic and, actually, edible.