Jason and I have done the dirty several times but we’d never transformed ourselves into speeding human rainbows…until now. We thought we could use a few more shades of awesome in our lives so we signed up for Color Me Rad along with my brother Drew, his wife Simone and our friend Abigail. Color Me Rad, a 5K with color bombing stations, is one part athleticism and two parts nonsensical dye dumping. As it turns out, plastering yourself with pigment under the guise of exercise is pretty rad.

Color Me Rad, for the most part, proceeds like any other race except periodically a giant cloud of purple or orange appears in front of you and you quickly find yourself in a swirling monochromatic haze. Although most of the participants run through these dye mists without covering their noses or mouths, our group decided to wear bandanas through the fog so we could breathe a little easier. Gulping fluorescent dust just isn’t as refreshing as gulping fluorescent Gatorade even if they contain the same FD&C. Despite our precautions, I still woke up a few times the following night coughing like crazy but I’m sure I spared myself some extra wheezing by donning that unstylish handkerchief.

After our scamper for color and follow-up attempt to pound ourselves back into pallidness, we stopped at our favorite waffle spot, Bruges, for some waffles and frites. Although the strange looks we got from some of the other patrons may have suggested otherwise, frites do taste just as good when eaten with neon fingers.

Color Me Rad was a lot of fun and a lot of messy. But dye, oddly enough, is considerably easier to clean off than dirt. (Apparently, I have a lot of experience coating myself in all sorts of tenacious goo.) Sure, we had purple sweat circles covering our inner elbows that were none too eager to be removed and we were the proud owners of vibrant boogers for a few days but, all things considered, we tidied up pretty nicely. Yes, we colored it rad and rad wasn’t half bad.