The Color Vibe 5K was held Saturday morning. The race went around Weber State University, starting and ending in the Dee Events Center. Around the course, there were four color stations where volunteers threw color packets at the runners.
The color packets were FDA-approved colored corn starch. The four colors were purple, blue, pink and yellow. After the race, each runner was given their own color packet, which many used to throw the powder at each other in the Dee Events Center parking lot during a dance party.
The money raised through the race will be given to Taylor Canyon Elementary School, which lost its funding for physical education.
“It’s important to get kids outside and healthy,” said Teancum Quist, the race director. Quist said about $1,000 were raised for the school.
Andrea Fisher, a dental hygiene major at WSU, said she came to the 5K to support the elementary school. This was Fisher’s first time participating in the Color Vibe 5K. While there, she met Jenny Evans, an engineering major at WSU, after the people she ran with left.
“It makes running fun,” Evans said. She said she would run the race again. “I would do it again right now if I could.”
The Color Vibe 5K was started in Logan in June. Some of the runners who went through the color stations would spin around to get color on their fronts and backs. Other runners would roll in the colored powder on the ground.
“I work at Weber State, so I like to support anything that happens at Weber State,” said Brooke Montgomery, who works in the child resource and referral department at WSU. She volunteered to throw the pink packets in the third color station. “It was a lot of fun. A lot of them just wanted to get lots of color. Nobody was shy about the colors.”
Christian Anderson, a foreign exchange student from Denmark, also ran in the event. Anderson has been in Utah for seven weeks.
“I really wanted to experience the country and get in the experience of a lifetime,” Anderson said. He said Utah is very different from Denmark. “Everything here is so big and just incredible.”
Anderson is a junior at Weber High School, and he will go back to Denmark at the end of the school year. Anderson is not the only runner who came from another area to run.
“We came to have a blast,” said Stephanie Walker, who came from Pocatello, Idaho, with her friend Jessica Stableton. “It’s not even about the running.”
Walker and Stableton drove about two hours to come to the 5K. Stableton said they wanted to go the Color Vibe in Idaho Falls, but ended up missing it, and the Ogden race was the next-closest one.
The Color Vibe 5K happens in cities all over the country, and recently had a race in Canada. During October, there i
s a 5K about every two weeks. Each race raises money for a different charity. The next race will be in Los Angeles this month.
