Not so rad is arriving at your hotel and, after failing to be able to negotiate a late check out time, opening the door to your room and smelling dead fish.
Rad is finding a restaurant with healthy food, a make-your-own-stir-fry chain called Genghis Grill, and then hanging out for an extra half hour as a severe storm shakes by.
Not so rad is discovering that your accommodations for the night are surrounded by rooms hosting a slumber party for 13-year-old girls. The main after-hours activity? Loudly stampeding up and down the halls.
Most rad of all was the Color Me Rad 5K race held in Glen Allen in support of the Special Olympics. Nearly 10,000 people took place in the event in which participants got pummeled with gobs of colored starch.
Going into the event, my plan was to stay clean throughout the family-friendly course. While I made it through the first two color gauntlets unscathed, I got squirted a bit with yellow at the third one. Things fell apart at the the next two stations when I got smacked with red powder and then took two major orange hits. By the time I finished, I was pretty much looked like a big tie-dyed shirt.
Glen Allen, a suburb of Richmond, has the look and feel of any number of areas you would find in Northern Virginia — white collar business parks, strip shopping stores and an upscale mall.
Richmond was part of Henrico County until the city became independent in 1871. The county with a population of about 320,000 now surrounds Richmond to the west, north and east. It was the site of numerous Civil War battles.
47 runs down, 87 to go.
