5k 0

Starlight Run 2012

By @colleenalicia · On June 5, 2012

On Saturday night I participated in one of Portland’s most popular fun runs, the Starlight Run.  I love this run because it happens right before the Starlight Parade. Half the city comes out to watch the parade, and are thereby forced to watch you run a 5k.  Most of them seem pretty happy about this, and cheer for you and try to make you give them high-fives.  I’m pretty sure that it’s exactly like running in the Olympics.

I’m also pretty sure that Portland likes the Starlight Parade more than Halloween.  Which is kind of weird, because Halloween has tons of candy, but the Starlight Parade has a a little bit of candy so I guess it makes sense.  I draw this conclusion based on the number of people seen wearing costumes at the Starlight Run versus on Halloween.  I don’t do costumes when I run (because of laziness, not because I don’t love a good costume), and I was in the minority.  One man was dressed up like a giant sperm.  The theme was rock stars, so I guess that was fitting.

I haven’t been running a ton, so I decided I should just go all out and see what happened.  This was a terrible idea, because I wasted all my energy during the first mile, which was before the run merged with the parade route.  By the time I got to the parade route and had one million people watching me, I was huffing and puffing and all kinds of people and sperm costumes were passing me.  At the very end my fan club was there to watch and cheer me on/chase me down:

I then got to turn around and watch my friends (Kathayoon, Zoe, April, and Kavi) finish, most of whom were much better at wearing costumes than I was.  We ended the night at a pre-wedding pub crawl.  Most of the guests were either from Dallas, or just coming from the rehearsal dinner, which means they were dressed very fancy.  The most dressing up I had done was to pull some jeans and a sweatshirt over my running clothes.  Then I had to spend five minutes arguing with one of the wedding guests about whether or not wearing a Nike sweatshirt makes me a hipster (it doesn’t).
I hope anyone else who ran the Starlight Run or another parade-related run had as an amazing time as I did!

I must confess, I started running at a very early age. Sadly, my runs were unblogumented until around age 23, so you'll have to use your imagination for all the runs I went on before that. Running has always been my go-to sport, but sadly, I spend a good amount of my time with chronic injuries. I have learned to entertain myself athletically with other pursuits such as kettlebell, yoga, and bikini competitions, when I can't run. In addition to my unique talent for working out and then blogging about it, I am an amateur puppy stylist and photographer, television enthusiast, and I'm usually CPR/AED certified, but I would still prefer if you didn't pass out when we're together.

You Might Also Like

No Comments

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.