triman

Well I did the Santa Speedo run, we couldn''t have had better weather, in fact it was too hot running in that hat! Not many showed up, but no doubt next year will be a much bigger crowd, especially since one of the guys came 4th overall, and Fox News announced in their coverage that the whole race, with thousands, was the Santa Speedo run.

Since the run was to raise money fro Out Youth, the local gay and lesbian charity for gay kids, we went a little bit further than just speedo's, lots of slogans. I spent most of my time before the race trying to avoid having my picture take standing next to the woman in the red bikini with "my best gay friend ->" on her stomach, and trying to avoid getting in the frame for the tv. interview. Hardly does my immigration and DPS protestations good to be seen already as an activist. Hey, I might have looked like this, but at least I was with her and Cassidy did the handiwork.

We lined up near the back as a group, it took all of 10-12 mins to get to the start line and then we ran through the crowd together. The trail of lights was actually pretty good, it was fun shouting "beware man in speedo" when passing people, and someone from the group shouted "go santa Speedo" - I'd shout "out, out, out" or "come out where ever  you are" - seemed appropriate, but I'm not sure anyone got it.

Head Santa, Cruz, for yes that's his name. Had optimistically printed carol sheets for us to sing while running. a bit over optimistic, first we were running too fast to sing, second, if you took your eyes of the road, we'd have banged into someone as the race was packed. We got a ton of cheers and loads of people took pictures, some of which are bound to show up on flickr, I just hope I was stood on the right side!

Oh yeah, you knew it was the speedo run, it said so on the front of my "costume".  This video has already been posted on youtube. Feel free to donate directly to outyouth here. I finished in 31.20, not bad given we ran together, and through at least 500-750 people!

(The guy that was 4th, was actually second and was local top runner, Derek Yorek. Two guys somehow managed to get ahead of him before the line, given when saw him he was on the shoulder of the winner and everyone else was way back, one can only assume they cut the course. Also in the top-50 or so was alkaloids , they were both speedo clad!).

The Allen Chen from the austinist has posted a slideshow here. If you don't read the austinist, you should, its a great place for news, events and opinions on Austin. It's where I first read about the Santa Speedo run!