Neon Run

Brooke has been busy with other projects and she's been encouraging me to contribute to the blog, so hopefully she won't mind if I post about one of the really awesome events we participated in recently.

A few months ago we saw a deal online for tickets to participate in the Neon Run.  For those of you who don't know what the Neon Run is (and I'm assuming that's pretty much everyone, including us before we saw this deal), I like to describe it as halfway between a 5k and a rave (minus the illegal drugs and pacifiers).  It's held at night, and everyone dresses in either neon colors or glow in the dark stuff.  Every so often they have these tents where they've set up a bunch of black lights.  As you run through they spray blacklight paint on everyone so you glow in the black lights.

We have been planning to do a race together for quite some time, so when we saw this deal we thought it might be a fun way to get started.  Our original plan was to come up with really awesome costumes for this race, but between starting the new job and looking for places to live (we're moving soon, but that's another post), I didn't get much farther than ordering a bunch of LED strips from ebay.

The week of the race came and I decided to throw something together that would still be cool, but not quite as incredible as we'd originally planned (we're saving that for Halloween).  We got some glow in the dark fabric paint and decorated some cheapo shirts.  We also used some black light body paint (provided in our race packet).  Here are the results:

Brooke would have you know that  the B on her shirt
stands for Brooke and not for the Red
Sox since she is a Yankee's fan

It was Brooke's idea to trace my
veins in blacklight paint.

The things I'm most proud of, however, were the LEDs.  I first put a couple rows of LED's behind my race number and hooked them to a battery and a switch so I could light up my number.  Then I put a strip of blue LED's around each of our shoes and hooked them to a 9V battery that I taped to the back of each shoe.  This is what they looked like at the beginning of the race:

But as it got darker, they stood out more and more.  I have never in my life gotten so many (or any) compliments about my shoes.  We literally could not go more than 100 yards without hearing someone say "look at those shoes!"  or "your shoes are awesome!"  It was a nice boost to my ego.  This picture should give you a better idea of what they looked like in the dark.

The run itself was pretty fun.  It was definitely not a race where everyone was super competitive.  I'm pretty sure some people walked the whole thing.  That was good for us, since neither of us is that fast.  We jogged most of the way.  Most of the time when we stopped, it was to adjust or fix our LED shoes.  I think we were both a little surprised at how easy it was*.

*Brooke's Note: I had heard of "fun runs," but I always just thought "fun run" meant "it's short, which is more fun and less hard/serious than more miles would be." Maybe I was right, but I felt that the Neon Run was probably the most literal definition of "fun run" I will ever see. The starting area was totally filled and refilled over and over with the thousands and thousands of runners, and it was actually nearly impossible to run at the beginning. From there on, it was more of a "go through the cool blacklight course and, if you want, you can run!" OK, most of the people ran at least some of the time, but loootttsss of the people defaulted to walking except during the exciting parts or after the first half mile. So, this is the perfect run for people who want to do a 5k where you actually are just at a giant party that moves.

Here are some more pictures and videos of us during/at the run.