For the third year in a row, nearly a thousand Santa Clarita residents traveled to Castaic Lake for the annual Santa Colorita fun run, staged by the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Don’t miss a thing. Get breaking Santa Clarita news alerts delivered right to your inbox.

Participants lined up at the starting line with white shirts, and just before each of the three waves of runners took off, ripped open packages of brightly colored cornstarch to throw, sending clouds of pink, blue, green and yellow through the air.

Throughout the run, volunteers at various points along the track added to the color by throwing more colored dust at runners.

Derek Moskal, who was the first runner to complete the 5 kilometer course, felt good about his performance.

“It’s a lot of fun. The color keeps you going,” he said. “You just want to run to the next color and be as colorful as possible.”

Moskal had never run a 5K before the Santa Colorita fun run.

“Last year I volunteered and saw how fun it is, so I signed up this year,” he said. “But I don’t do 5k’s.”

The event also featured the “Skip for Jack” race to benefit the Jack’s Angels Foundation, a Santa Clarita nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a pediatric brain tumor.

Do you have a news tip? Call us at (661) 298-1220, or drop us a line at community@hometownstation.com.