Colour

The first-in-Australia Color Run[^1] was held in Melbourne the other day. Despite occurring in Australia, they still insisted on spelling it “Color”. This was my first irritation with the event, but not the last.

However, I should point out that my vague irritations are just that. If you want to do a 5km run and you are anywhere between indifferent and keen to have coloured powder sprayed at you, then the Color Run is for you.

However.

There’s something really satisfying about getting to the end of a task and having some sort of physical evidence to show for it. So I can see why you might start to think along the lines of the Color Run. “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if people ended up covered in all sorts of colours?”

Well, yes, it would, if you came up with something that they’d have to do that would cause them to be covered in colour. Slide along something blue. Wade through something green. Give them a challenge (a very mild one, because you want to keep it family friendly), and make it one where as a consequence of doing it, they get coloured.

But if you want to go home early, you could just say “We’ll throw blue at them when they run past”. Which is not satisfying, and is not linked to actually achieving something, unless you count managing to grab the attention of the volunteers.

Alright, my grump is over. We now return you to the reassuring radio silence you’ve come to expect from thegreatescapism.com.