If you thought this was a color run Jamaica Mistaica…

Once upon a time back in April I registered for the Foam Glow color run during their Free* Limited Time+ race registration offer for myself and my friend Alicia…

I put notations next to the words free and limited time as you still had to pay taxes, a service fee, and any merch preorders (more on those later) and the offer was consistently recurring up until days before the events rescheduled date

Rescheduled??? Yes, because while we had planned to run in October for our birthday Mother Nature had other plans and hurricane Ian caused the event to bump back two months causing Alicia to have a previous commitment.

Now my fourth ever running event was Cool Events’s bubble run which had its own set of red flags where it was called the bubble run TAMPA the race was in LAKELAND and bib pick up was in a sporting goods store in BRANDON. Thankfully the bib pick up this time was on site (free night of $5 cash day of) …

I picked up my shirt and bib…I thought I preordered a headband but never received one and there wasn’t a place to look it up. It's fine…Bondi Band & Crown Athletics are the way to go…

Speaking of bondi band my ootd was my rainbow bondi band, race tee shirt (as I thought it would keep colors more than a wicking shirt) and my lite blue old navy capris …

I had glow stick bracelets & necklaces but forgot clasps so put a couple in my hair as hair sticks & a held a few in my hands ultimately 

There was a PRE PARTY that was supposed to start at 5 and the race was supposed to start at 6. The copious amount of pre race emails talked about wave times selected at registration however at bib pick up I asked about looking up the time because I didn’t even remember picking a time and was told waves were released on a first come first serve basis. That said I was in wave one which probably will never happen again but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I arrived at 4:52 and was dropped off just outside the gate. I paused to take a few pictures of the planes outside the air museum as I made my way toward the starting area.

 

Fun story about a plane… on January 16, 1996, Buffett's Grumman HU-16 airplane named Hemisphere Dancer was shot at by Jamaican authorities, while taxiing in the waters near Negril….

Anyway once I arrived in addition to the race day bib pick up & merch tent there were a few food trucks. In addition to that there was a State Farm booth with glow paint and so I doodled a little on my arm 

 

They also had some giveaways like sunglasses and backpacks but you had to sign up for a mailing list. If you needed to do so for the paint as well oops. They also had a booth for a local syndicated programming network also with giveaways like their own branded drawstring backpacks and beads but they too required you to sign up for a mailing list. The booth also had a corn hole area.

There was a DJ booth where the bass was overpowering and periodically he’d call out instagrams of people who had liked a giveaway post on his page to tell them they won gift cards or other prizes.

Wandering around killing time I noticed there really weren’t any photo areas despite photo packages being sold.

I propped my camera for a before selfie but since that was insanely unflattering and well there really wasn't a need for a before pic as the only color on me after was from the above mentioned paint that had still been very very wet on my arm the whole time but here is a selfie of me in front of one of the earlier posted planes

Speaking of planes… the Jamaican police believed the Hemisphere Dancer to be smuggling marijuana though Buffet claimed his main interest for taking the trip was for eating Jamaican Chicken.

As I wandered around killing time I observed a few things like some people had tshirts while others looked like they were made of performance mesh…also there were two different bib styles. I'd say maybe one bib was for registrations pre October and the other for registrations post??? Maybe there was a place to upgrade for $$ for a tech shirt and I didn’t see or bother to do so all those months ago?? 

I also observed lots of dead zones so I hoped my Fitbit wouldn’t be wonky. I figured in the worst case scenario I’d screenshot my start and finish time and manually log it even though color runs normally run just shy of an ACTUAL 5K.

At about 5:48 I took a sunset picture but it wasn’t that pretty so not bothering to post.

At 5:51 I noticed people heading towards the start area. As I arrived I snapped my glow sticks and decided A) I wasn’t going to listen to music because I thought it would be as lively a party as the staging area with the dj (it wasn’t) and B) I wasn’t going to try to hold my water bottle with my glow sticks (while waiting to start it was announced there would be water midway and near the finish but we will get to that)

At about 6:04 music started playing and wave one got off to a start at 6:13 where we went under our first foam drop

I was surprised that the foam unlike the races name had no glow just a black light that made the green paint on my arm pop a bit…this would set the tone

.10 miles in we reached another Foam drop (speaking of foam drops with this being the first original post on this new blog format due to exceeding the picture limit on LiveJournal and not wanting to give a Russian owned IT interface my credit card to pay a $30 monthly premium subscription to keep uploading photos I'll be doing one big section of my foam pics in the end.... )

At .22 miles I went to adjust the waistband of my leggings not realizing that the paint on my arms was still wet…suffice to say my stomach was blue when I headed into the shower oops!!!

At .39 miles you could see a line of cars still trying to get into the venue (this was time stamped 6:19)

There were a few planes on course but there was one pretty well lit and well I wasn’t throwing away my shot

Anyway, before we continue, let me finish my plane story…

So the Hemisphere Dancer sustained minimal damage, with only a few bullet holes. The plane had been carrying Buffett, as well as U2's Bono, Bono's wife Ali and their children, Island Records producer Chris Blackwell, and co-pilot Bill Dindy. The Jamaican government acknowledged the mistake and apologized to Buffett. This incident became the inspiration for Buffett's 1996 hit "Jamaica Mistaica"

There were never any formal mile markers but my device hit mile one in 16:38 minutes

I was trying to run on paved portions of the course but the grassy, gravelly and muddy portions were a different story and I kept having to fidget with my phone's flashlight to prevent any slips, trips or hard crashes on my face as it pitch black aside from phones, glow sticks and a sporadic spotlight.

My Fitbit said 1.75 when we got to the water that was supposed to be “halfway” through the course if you could call it that. It was a table of self-serve plastic cups and what basically amounted to a sprinkler hose… I stupidly took a drink and almost regurgitated it right back on the side of the course…unfiltered florida tap water is nasty as fuck…

At 1.96 there was finally got more foam not so much glow

I registered reaching mile 2 shortly after this… 34:46 

At 2.05 there was a building containing a real bathroom that had a bit of a line making me feel the RunDisney vibes …

At about 2.28 there was a club car where a guy was handing out truly the only foam that glowed in the form of a styrofoam glow stick.

At 2.49 another foam arch where I badly attempted more selfies since I was past the point of PR not that I was expecting it.

2.77 miles another foam arch and more failed blurry selfie attempts 

I crossed the finish arch with only 2.91 miles officially ran and a time of 52:53 

I took my finishers water bottle and a medal and attempted an after selfie but since A) it was in the same unflattering angle as my full body before selfie and B) since the only thing glowing in the black light was the green text on my shirt, the pink of my belt, my glow sticks, and the green paint smeared on my arm again not worth posting 

but here is the massive foam pic dump I promised

 

November marathon a month

7:17:43

Run The Year Badges:

Overall Mileage:

1957.73/2022

Most Magical Virtual 

I’m on my second lap around the world with a cumulative mileage of 93.09 and present location of BB Wolfs at Disney Springs

 

When I’m done with this lap unless they add a new virtual tracker I’ll probably end this challenge 

Upcoming races:

12/18: Hot Chocolate 10K

1/18: castaway cay 5k fun run (potentially)

2/25: Gasparilla 15K

2/26: Gasparilla 8K

¾: Promise Run 5k

4/14: Springtime Surprise 5K

4/15: Springtime Surprise 10K

4/16: Springtime Surprise 10 Miler

Race PRs

1M {15:26} 3K {30:59} 5K {42.46} 8K {1:13:59} 10K {1:42:52} 15K {2:19:09} HALF {3:54:55} FULL {7:08:15*} *virtual full run in increments