Cooper River Bridge Run

I’m exhausted! I was up late on Friday night picking up a friend from the airport, and then up early Saturday (4am to be exact!) to prepare for Charleston’s Annual Cooper River Bridge Run.  No, you didn’t miss the part where I became a runner….I volunteered!

You may remember that I work with an organization called Camp Happy Days (who help kids with cancer).  Remember when Loo Loo and I participated in Ansley’s Attempt and got in the Guinness Book of World Records?  All courtesy of Camp Happy Days!  Well, CHD is one of the beneficiaries of the funds raised by the 10K in Charleston, The Cooper River Bridge Run.  It’s a really famous race and we have people from all over who come to run it (including a handful of Africans who almost always sweep it!).

Photo courtesy of www.bridgerun.com

Loo Loo, our friend Danielle, and I volunteered for the race on behalf of Camp Happy Days.  We were given a little yellow rope and a strip of caution tape and told to keep our section (about 1,500 people out of the 44,000 total runners) in place.  I held a tall sign that told our section whether to WALK or STOP.

We arrived at 5:30am, and by 10:00 am had slowly guided our section to the starting line.  Where our 1,500 continued to attempt to push through the caution tape wait patiently until we were instructed to start the race.  They had a staggered start so it wasn’t a mob scene.  It pretty much was anyway, once they told our group to start running!

While we were waiting, we made lots of friends and saw lots of hilarious and clever costumes!  Sure, there were your groups of girls in tutus, masses of people in bunny ears, matching shirts/pants/socks/wigs, etc.  And then there was the larger than life Pac-Man characters that took off chasing each other toward the finish line.  And the Green Fairy…in his skin-tight, neon green outfit and pixie wings.  I’d post a picture, but to put it politely, he had NO PANTY LINES!!!! =)

One of my favorites was the Flinstones, complete with their car!

But our absolute favorites were our Southern Belles!  Loes, Marilyn and Glenda were standing right behind our caution tape and so we struck up quite a little friendship while we were waiting.  They were from Anderson, South Carolina and were part of a Senior Follies group there.  They were wearing costumes from one of their variety shows…..I even got a preview of their Can-Can!  I might just have to take a little road trip to Anderson some time to see them!

Once the race began and our duties were over, Loo Loo, Danielle and I did walk over the bridge and back, but decided that we needed a beverage at Red’s IceHouse rather than walking the whole race!! =)

What did you do this weekend?