Making exercise fun increases the chances you’ll want to keep doing it. Apart from the physical challenge, exercising with family and friends–and competing–provide emotional support as well.
Creativity is no less needed than in concocting new ways to enjoy yourself while you get a healthy workout. Here are some of the most innovative and wild ways to race out there and have a blast doing it!
1. Color Me Rad
Racers start with a white t-shirt and are sprayed with color throughout the 5K course by spectators. By the finish line, you look like art by Jackson Pollock. With your body as canvas and your heart as your muse, you can feel beautiful in every way.
2. Electric Run
Like running in a club–replete with lights, lasers, sparklers, and dance music–the electricity surrounds and runs through you as you go. It’s a 5K race with themes along the course like “Electro Rainforest” and “Rainbow Road”. For individuals and teams, there’s an enormous dance party at the end with DJs and light shows–healthy clubbing without being carded. The more outrageous your clothes, the funkier the party. Get on down.
3. Foam Festival
Kids love this one. This 5K obstacle course is laced with foam, water, and mud. Sprayed on surfaces that become slippery when wet, bouncy castles and slides make for slapstick hilarity as your physical prowess is tested.
4. Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series
Music makes exercise easier and your work-out efforts more strenuous without you even having to think about it. In a rock ‘n’ roll marathon, there’s live music playing at points the whole way through so you can run to the beat and even play air guitar/drums while you go. At the end, there’s a big concert to rock out before your body realizes what you’ve just done to it.
5. Superhero Events
Superheroes are part of our culture: everyone secretly wishes s/he had some kind of superpower, whether it’s being invisible, having herculean strength, or shape shifting. In this race, you can live out your super fantasy–well, kind of. Whether as individuals or in teams, with variable course lengths, straight race, obstacles, or relays, your performance will reveal your inner hero.
6. Tough Mudder
This race is not for the faint of heart or those that aren’t in exceptional physical shape. Based on a military boot camp program, people who participate spend the two weeks following the race recuperating and the rest of the year preparing for the next race. Some are so into it that they travel the world to race in Tough Mudder events. This is a team race covering 10-12 miles and you’ll need each other to complete the course. “Overcoming challenges ain’t pretty.” But it’s extremely rewarding–if you can finish in one piece.
https://youtu.be/vh5HdPM_QuE
7. Zombie Run
It’s now cool to be a zombie. Popular culture is enamored with the idea. This race puts you in the middle of a science fiction nightmare as you race through muddy obstacle courses (some with added fake blood!) haunted by the undead who want to take one of the strips of cloth around your waist (remember flag football?). If you finish with at least one flag, you’re a survivor. Otherwise, you become one of them. Ooooo. Scary.
