Students joined thousands of Color Run participants on Saturday, Oct. 18 in Lawrence to run the “Happiest 5K on the Planet.”

Before the Color Run, participants receive a kit which includes a t-shirt, headband, bracelet, bag and tattoo. Once the race begins, at each kilometer either pink, blue, yellow or purple powder is thrown onto the participants by volunteers using colored powder filled squeeze bottles.

“I think the run was fun, except there were parts that you ran all the way back and forth with no colors,” junior Danielle Holt said. “[Also,] the people were very energetic. Some took [the race] very seriously and some people just did it for fun and wore rainbow socks and tutus.”

Sophomore Elaina Bartlow agrees that the race was very exciting.

“[The race] was a lot of fun, everyone was so happy,” Bartlow said. “I was high-fiving everyone that was coming from the other direction, everyone was just smiling and throwing color.”

At the conclusion of the run, there is a Finish Festival where the runners throw powder packets of various colors in the air.

“[The Finish Festival] had a band who handed out color packets and when they counted down, everyone would throw [the color] in the air and it create be a dust [cloud] of different colors,” Holt said. “You couldn’t breathe and it got in your mouth and it was colored corn starch so it tasted horrible. Getting more color thrown on you was kind of cool though.”

Bartlow loved the atmosphere but disliked the actual course.

“I was expecting a better course. I did not like the course we ran, it smelled really bad.” Bartlow said. “[The course] ranges one direction that then came back on the same exact [route]. They could’ve done it through some cooler streets down there in Lawrence.”