Last year I wrote a blog post about the best places to run around in Austin on a day to day basis, and mentioned a few of Austin’s most famous races. (Click here if you missed it!) Austin has a strong running community and a ton of marathons and races. With spring on the horizon, I thought it a good time to discuss a few of the best races to run in Austin.
Let’s start off with the fun races. Color Run, coming in May (sign up open January 15th!), is one of the most fun and colorful races in Austin! It has a national tour, so you can run the race in other cities around the country. This is a 5K run, about 3.1 miles long, where volunteers throw dry paint at you at the start and after each 1K you complete. You start wearing all white, and finish a colorful mess. Once you finish you are given a bag of dry paint of your own, and there is a massive dance party by the finish line where everyone dances and throws paint. I did it with a few friends last year, and highly recommend the race to runners and non-runners alike.
Warning: Make sure you shower the paint out of your hair (yes, it will get in your hair) as soon as you get home. I didn’t get all of the paint out immediately, and my hair had pink and green sections for a week following the race because I let the paint sit for a few hours. Unfortunately for me, that week after the race was full of public accounting firm career nights. Nothing like colored hair for networking!
Another fun, and extremely messy, race for everyone to do is the Muddy Buddy. This race, also part of a national tour, is a partner race where you mountain bike and run. There are obstacles throughout the course, including a large mud pit you crawl through with your partner at the end of the race. I particularly enjoyed the costume contest at the beginning, where the funniest costumes received some recognition and appreciation. There are a lot of races in Austin similar to this one, in particular the Warrior Dash and Mud Run.
The Gorilla Run may be one of the strangest races in Austin. Instead of a race t-shirt, each race participant receives a full gorilla costume to run in. Volunteers run dressed as bananas for the gorilla-clad racers to chase through Austin’s streets.
Austin has a number of zombie runs in the winter, where you attempt to outrun zombies as they chase you throughout an urban course. I have also noticed many “urban-challenge” races as well. These are similar to the TV show “The Amazing Race” where you complete tasks around the city on foot, or take part in a city-wide scavenger hunt.
Finally, I am going to make one final push for something I think everyone in Austin should take part in, whether it be racing or volunteering. I really think everyone should take part in the LiveSTRONG Marathon and Half Marathon while they are in Austin. It is a very energetic and inspiring race that I feel is unrivaled. Only slightly less than 3 weeks away! And, in case you are feeling particularly generous, I am raising money for the LiveSTRONG Foundation as a member of Team LiveSTRONG again this year, and you can see my personal page here.