Blacklight Run
April 5, 2014
The Black Light 5K run was an inaugural event brought to the Las
Vegas area. It looked like a fun race to do with the family, so I
registered the whole family for this race. The theme was to wear white and
different colored powders would be thrown at you at various mile markers and
black lights would be set up throughout the race. This race was held at Sam
Boyd Stadium and was set to begin at sun down. This was the second race of the
day for Jason and I, him as a participant and I was a spectator. So, this was
going to be a long day for us, as Jason completed the Spartan race earlier. It
was very windy on this evening and it was not very dark at sun down, so the
start of the race was delayed. While waiting for the race to start, it began to
rain. It was a pretty chilly with the rain and wind. Being that it was Vegas,
we dressed in shorts and t-shirts, so we were all cold and huddled together for
warmth. We took a bunch of silly photos while trying to stay warm.
We were
finally able to line up for the start line. There were so many people and there
were no designated corrals. It was a bit of a cluster. I'm pretty sure this race had a larger turn out than expected. Once we were in the
corrals, we had a long wait. My daughter, Gillian, was getting frustrated with other participants because they were cutting open their glow sticks and shaking out the liquid. She was very concerned that she would get some in her eye and it would cause damage. It was finally dark enough and controlled groups
were being released at certain intervals. It took a long time to finally make
it to the front of the line. We maybe started at 10pm. The course was very dark
and very uneven with lots of loose gravel. I twisted my ankle trying to run
during the race. The course terrain transitioned to a flat pavement and before we knew it, we were back on gravel. The course was definitely not
planned out well and there were not any volunteers at the transition areas
assisting people on the course.
I was
pretty disappointed with the throwing of the powder at each mile marker. The
volunteers at the color stations were not very liberal with the colors. I mean seriously, people came out to have fun and get completely covered in colored powder! At one
point, I reached into the bucket of powder and grabbed handfuls and threw it on
myself and family. Someone had to do it!!
At the
finish line, we were each given our own bag of powder to throw at each other in
the large black light color pit.
All in all we did have fun, even with the late start and late end. I would have loved to have stayed longer and enjoyed the music and color pit, but we were just too exhausted. This was not one of my favorite races and I'll pass on it when it comes back to
Vegas.
