Cigs Race Report – April 5th, 2008

With this race being just one week out from my marathon, I wasn’t really sure how my legs would feel and what kind of pace I could run. It wasn’t until about 15 minutes prior to the start of the race that my friend Mike Denehey suggested I run as a gorilla since his gorilla suit wearer hadn’t shown up. Mike was running as a chicken and had several races lined up in which he was having the “Chicken vs. Gorilla Showdown”. Surprisingly, the idea of dressing up like a gorilla and running a race sounded like fun to me…

That is how I found myself on the starting line of a 4 mile race wearing a 10 lb full body gorilla suit. Vision and breathing were slightly compromised, but I was determined to put in a respectable time for a gorilla. Following the start, I surged into the lead with the chicken right next to me. For about 200 yards or so the chicken and gorilla led the race and then the heat started to build in the suits and the compromised breathing began to take effect. Slowly several runners attempted to pull up even to me and so I did what any gorilla would do, I moved in front of them and blocked their path!

Eventually around 6 or 7 runners had passed me and I had settled into a sustainable pace, accounting for the semi-recycled air I was breathing. While most gorillas don’t wear shoes, this one was and unfortunately I hadn’t tied one of them well enough. After weighing the consequences and deciding a gorilla shouldn’t run with untied shoes, I stopped and attempted to tie my shoe. Unfortunately, my big fat gorilla hands were really made for tying shoes… Eventually after losing close to half a minute or so, I was back on the chase of these crazy human runners.

The chicken had taken quite a lead on me by this point, but I was feeling good and just settled back into my sustainable pace. Eventually I caught up to the chicken who was running with a stereo system in his backpack, so he couldn;t hear me behind him. Also, as we all know chickens have limited vision in running races just like gorillas do, so I stayed directly behind him shifting sides if I saw the chicken head rotate to either side. After staying behind the chicken for about half a mile, I felt like it was time to put the hammer down on the chicken so I ran on past him, throwing in a suitable roar as I ran past.

Finally the end of the four mile run was just about reached. I had passed several more runners and had one more runner attempting to finish ahead of me. With one more roar I surged on past the runner finishing in 6th place with a 28:27 time and a 7:06 average mile pace. Not bad for a gorilla…