Sunday, December 6, 2009

Santa Run

In all my years of attending and putting on crazy events, this is one of the best I've ever seen. I volunteered on Saturday morning at the Santa Run in Provo. It was HILARIOUS! It's a 5K race where all the runners dress as Santa, the volunteers dress like elves, and the aid stations are milk and cookies. It was awesome.

Before the race started, the race director had all the Santas do "warmups". He did this rendition of "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" that involved "boots, belly, beard and hat." There were also jumping jacks that were counted like this... "One. Ho ho ho. Two. Ho ho ho...." It was so funny.

There were about 200 runners and about 25 elves. There was music blasting along the course that involved songs like, "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". Some of the Santas had stockings full of candy canes that they would throw out to the crowd as they were running. Others had silly string they would spray on everyone. One had jingle bells tied to his foot so he was "jingling all the way" and some others had stuffed their shirts so they would have a Santa belly.

Here are the milk and cookie stops. They had candy cane sticks at the aid stations too.

The race director dressed as Santa too and his van even had a sleigh hooked up to the top.

Mine and Caron's jobs were to track the runners' times as they came through the finish line. We just had to click a button every time someone came through and it would record their time. Since our job was at the end of the race we spread some Christmas cheer in the meantime by doing some elf-y heel clicks.

It was so cold. I was wearing under armor, a fleece pullover, a hoodie, my coat, and my elf shirt on top. My running tights, workout pants, and my elf pants on bottom, wool socks, 2 pair of gloves and 2 hats. Caron informed me that I looked "ridiculous" with my elf shirt on over my coat. It was worth looking ridiculous though because it was like 18 degrees out there at 6:30 a.m.

I seriously had so much fun. I wanted to actually run in the race, but the registration fee was a bit out of my budget this month, so I decided to volunteer instead. And I got a free elf costume out of the deal too! Maybe next year I will have to save up so I can actually run. But if not, being a Santa's Helper was fun too!

5 comments:

sarah h. said...

That looks like fun. I'm sad I missed it.

Leslie@leserleeslovesandhobbies said...

I don't think you look ridiculous. I think you make a fantastic elf.

The Lively's said...

That would be fun to see! I had friend that ran that race.

Cheryl said...

That looks like a ton of fun! And I think you look very cute, not ricidulous.

The Woodland's said...

You both look great as Santa's Elves! What a fun thing to do!