Kurt and I had been pretty excited about this race for a while. It’s a 6K run through a neighborhood all decked out with tacky Christmas lights. Participants are encouraged to wear tacky holiday attire. The more lights, jingle and just plain tackiness, the better.
Kurt had ordered all kinds of lighted things for us to wear, and we’d made a trip to Goodwill to pick up tacky red and green outfits. We were all set for a festive, fun evening.
Then we checked the weather. A week out, they were calling for rain. But the forecast is never right, especially so far out.
For a while it looked like we would get the bulk of the rain in the morning, and it would taper off in time for the race.
The day of the race, the forecast changed. Now they were calling for light rain in the morning, changing to a more steady rain in the afternoon and evening hours, and tapering off by midnight.
The race was scheduled for 6pm rain, snow or shine.
It was raining pretty hard as we drove to Richmond. We parked at the community college, changed clothes in the car, opened our umbrellas and made a dash for the shuttle bus.
My feet were soaked by the time we got to the bus. Without my coat, I was freezing.
It was a short (warm and delightful) bus ride to the event site. Once we arrived, I didn’t want to get off the bus.
But Santa was there to greet us.
We made our way over to packet pick-up and got our numbers. Each participant was also given a couple of glow sticks and a light-up bracelet.
We then needed to attach our race numbers to our shirts, which was impossible to do holding umbrellas. We looked around for a place out of the rain, but there wasn’t a public tent. We eventually found a vendor tent without anybody in it, and ducked in there. The vendor came back after a few minutes, but he was very nice and told us to stay as long as we needed to. Another lady came by and told us that we should get some pre-race cookies and Starbucks coffee. We found the cookies, (and each ate one) but didn’t see the coffee. We did find a vendor selling coffee, though. I bought a cup to warm me up.
We soon realized that we’d arrived too early. There wasn’t anything to do but walk around to try to stay as warm as possible.
A lot of work had been put into the event site. The lights and decorations were pretty spectacular. There were a lot of great photo spots. I tried to take pictures, but I had to keep taking my gloves off, and it was hard to keep my phone dry. All the pictures came out blurry.
If it wasn’t raining, it would have been a lot of fun. Even in the rain, it was still cool to see everybody decked out in gaudy Christmas costumes and lights.
One group of participants had made a sleigh. They were all dressed as the reindeer pulling the sleigh, and a dummy dressed as grandma was sticking out from underneath. It was really creative and cool! I thought it was something the race directors had put together. I didn’t realize until later that it was just a costume. Those reindeer definitely should have won a prize!
Sorry about the blurry picture. If you look closely you can sort of see grandma’s feet hanging out from the back of the sleigh.
As we lined up for the race start, I was also impressed with how many people had come out to run in pretty much the worst possible weather conditions.
Once we started running, I was even more impressed by all the neighborhood people who were outside cheering for all the runners. There were so many lights and people lining the streets playing Christmas music and cheering. Lots of kids were holding their hands out for high-fives from the runners.
It was such a cool experience to run through the streets in the dark and to look ahead and see hundreds of runners all lit up, and house after house with awesome lights and decorations.
I soon discovered that it’s really hard to run in a wig that kept sliding off my head, and about 8 strands of lights and beads around my neck that kept bouncing.
There was a cookie and water stop during the race. It was the first cookie I’d ever tried to eat during a run. It was yummy, but not very easy to eat.
We stopped for a picture in front of a stretch of particularly brightly lit houses. Unfortunately, none of my pictures came out very good.
I had taken my wig and sunglasses off during the run, so we stopped again a little before the finish to put them back on. There was a long, lit-up chute everybody got to run through in the final stretch.
Santa was standing at the finish giving all the runners a high-five as they finished.
The medals were gingerbread houses.
They make great tree ornaments.
I didn’t wear my Garmin, and I don’t think the race was timed at all.
After we finished, we picked up our t-shirts, got some water, went to the post-race food tent (more cookies!), and took a spin around all the vendor booths again.
So, the food offered before the race? Cookies. During the race? Cookies. After the race? Cookies. I felt like we were in some crazy Christmas Land where everybody eats Christmas cookies (and nothing but Christmas cookies) all day long. Sort of like Buddy in the movie Elf.
We picked up our checked bags, which had been placed in plastic bags, but then set out on tables in the rain. The dry clothes we were planning to change into were not exactly dry.
We really wanted to stay for a while and maybe catch the awards ceremony, but we were both wet, cold and tired, so we headed back to the shuttle bus.
The Tacky Christmas Light Run was a fun holiday event. We can’t wait to do it next year, (hopefully NOT in the rain!).
The Running Nemophilist 