Last weekend I ventured out to the Pomona Fairgrounds with Kelly to do a FUN RACE! I mean, every race is FUN right? But for this race, I left all thoughts of Garmins, finish times, and PRs out of my head. I was going to experience a race with a ton of super excited people at NIGHT!
We were going to do our first ever, Neon Splash Dash. In the pre-race email we received, we were told to wear WHITE shirts. But of course we had to add a little sparkle also.
We made ourselves some shakes for energy and headed out on our way. We also realized that you can take great selfies {self-portraits} if you position your iPhone on the dashboard of Kelly’s car, giggle!
Before the race, I made sure to get some neon/glow stick bracelets for the race. I ordered them from Amazon and they were perfect. I’m pretty picky about stuff and I actually read the reviews for the different types of glow stick bracelets. The package arrived super fast and came with connectors, a glow ball/flower and glow glasses kit.
Kelly and I should have started assembling the bracelets on the way to the race, but ended up doing it while walking in the parking lot. I wanted to wait to the last minute to preserve the “glow”.
Kelly and I had on similar outfits, but it was totally unplanned. We both obviously had on white tank tops, but we also wore pink Team Sparkle visors, and Team Sparkle skirts. Kelly wore a white skirt, and I wore my pink skirt. We also had on rainbow race legs and old shoes. We are pretty picky about our running shoes and we didn’t want to get glow color on our every day running shoes.
And we lined up in the corrals with everyone else and got ready to run! Everyone looks so fresh and clean with their white shirts on!
They started the race in groups to space things out and to prevent chaos. This was the group of people behind us, waiting to start the race. They looked super excited!
While we were waiting to start the race, I put on several glowing bracelets on my wrists. They were super bright! Meanwhile Kelly was “cracking” the excess glow sticks to hand out to other runners in the crowd. We had 100 glow sticks which was way too many for just the two of us.
The race started just as the sun was starting to go down. I captured this beautiful photo mid-run. You are probably wondering what type of camera did I have with me? I took my Sony Cybershot TX20, which is waterproof, so I figured that it would be perfect for the race when I took photographs while getting “splashed”.
We made it to the first “neon splash station”. The trick is to not really run through the station, because you won’t get adequate coverage. Kelly and I kinda ran through sideways and rotated around through the stations. I covered my face though because I was wearing my contact lenses and didn’t want to get anything in my eyes.
We went through several other splash stations, but I did not capture them all. I waited at one of the last stations, pink, to get some live action photos. These volunteers looked like they were having a blast covering everyone in pink neon!
At the last part of the race, we ran through a tunnel where they had black lights hung up. It was getting crowded so they hustled everyone through. I captured this photo of Kelly taking a self-portrait in the tunnel. She definitely “glowed”.
Oh look it’s the finish line! It was so bright and colorful!
At the end of the race, they had a long series of “step and repeats” with black lights, where you could take pictures. We had fun capturing our glowing outfits. Obviously, I had none of the glow paint on my face, so you can see in the photo that my face is almost black. But look at all of the pretty neon!
Kelly and I got some fun pictures together too! She got way more neon on her than I did though. I think I may have had some “neon jealousy”!
Look who we “ran into” at the race? We caught up with Nikki from Delovely Details and her husband right at the finish line. I captured this photo of them while they were taking self-portraits at the step-and-repeat.
Kelly, Nikki, and I even got a photo together showing our Team Sparkle skirts and our neon-splashed race gear!
After everyone finished the race, there was a dance party going on. A DJ was playing music and everyone was having. There were food trucks and refreshments for sale there also.
We brought extra clothes to change into post-race. I captured Kelly before she changed into her non-neon clothing. She looks so bright and colorful. We brought towels to wipe off the color too, and as usual I brought baby wipes which are good for cleaning pretty-much almost anything!
After cleaning up, we headed back to Orange County and made our way through the In-N-Out drive thru for some post race food!
Oh, and if you were wondering how long my glow bracelets last? We started them around 6:30pm, and they glowed until at least noon the next day. They were very bright glowing on the night stand next to me.
We had a blast doing the Neon Splash Dash! It was so fun to do a night race and even better with a friend! It was a great way to spend a Saturday night. I saw a ton of large groups of people, and some were even wearing matching outfits. I’m pretty much hooked on these “fun runs” and can’t wait till the next one!
Disclosure: I was provided entry to the Neon Splash Dash free of charge. All opinions and photographs are my own. I also used some affiliate links within my post, but sometimes it works and why not, cause you were probably wondering where I bought the stuff anyway!
