To start, the premise of the race is similar to The Color Run – it’s a 5k where they throw chalk and paint at you along the course. Best case scenarios is to wear white and come out colored, and in this case, glowing neon!

I went on Friday (the day before the race) to collect packets for our group and that was a less than ideal start to the experience. At packet pick up, they took the waivers, scanned the tickets, gave you a bib, and that was it. No ID check or anything. There wasn't an expo, it was just a few tables of Neon Dash merchandise available for purchase and unfortunately, that stuff was way overpriced. We got our own glowing stuff from Amazon and saved a ton of money! Since there weren't any exhibitors and there wasn't a huge process to getting packets, it didn't seem like it was worthwhile to go down early and pick up our race packets. If I did this race again, I definitely would just wait until the day of.

Swag was blah - if you're a person that loves race shirts and swag, don't bother with this race. While the entry was super affordable ($20, I believe), it came with a cotton shirt, and a strange thing that our group thinks was supposed to be worn as a ninja-style headband. Again, great for being affordable, but if you're into swag, skip this one.

At 8:45, they told us to head over to the start line. Little did we know they were going to do a wave start, leaving us in the corral for a solid 30 minutes. And it felt MUCH longer than that, because we couldn’t even hear what was going on at the start line. Once we actually got to start the race, it was less of a neon dash and more of a you may or may not glow at some point during this parade that is not really a "race". While we knew we weren't being timed, we still wanted to get out there and run it as a "race" with a few photos along the way, and it was definitely not that type of event. You win some, you lose some, right?

Our biggest complaint was the water situation at the race. There was one water stop on course, where they were filling up Dixie cups with a hose. There was a huge line, meaning that we would have to stop and wait to get water. After the race, there was another Dixie cup tent (hard to find), but the water was warm. Definitely not what we were looking for being hot, sweaty, and with chalk in our mouths!

Overall, we got a couple cool photos and it was a pretty low entry fee, but I won't be doing this race again.

Personal review: http://www.girlinaredsundress.com/2014/06/neon-dash-5k-race-recap/