Running with the Monsters
Image credit: Photo courtesy Monster Dash.
It’s not every Saturday morning you find yourself standing shivering in a barely moving line in front of a row of Biffys, unzipping your boyfriend’s lycra Spider Man costume for him so he can pee. But then, it’s not every Saturday morning that you get to run down the middle of Summit Avenue surrounded by figure skaters, munchkins, q-tips (or were they tampons?), Wonder Woman, monkeys, and the guy from the board game Operation.
The Monster Dash is one of the annual races put on by Team Ortho, held around Halloween and featuring a costume contest along with a half marathon, 10-mile, and 5K race. This year, almost 7,000 runners took part in the half marathon and 10-mile race in St. Paul, with thousands more taking part in the 5K at Lake Harriet. I registered for the half marathon months ago, knowing that having a race on the horizon would be the only way I’d motivate myself to keep running through my insane fall work schedule.
The day of the race (October 29th) turned out to be my first full day off of work since September 10, so you can imagine how it felt to wake up to my alarm at the unkind hour of 6 a.m. I decided my costume would be that of an overworked, exhausted actress with a day job (i.e. black running capris and a black shirt), and off I went to gather Mike, who was donned much more festively in a full Spider Man body suit. We met up with our buddies at the starting line (Audrey from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the afore-mentioned Operation dude), and away we went.
My rough goal was to finish in the neighborhood of two hours (a 9:07/mile pace). I ran the same race in 1:59:06 last year, but I knew my training this year wasn’t as thorough, so I was prepared to not set any new personal records. Indeed, after only the first couple miles, I told Spider-Mike that it was already feeling more challenging than it should at this point, and wished him luck as I dropped back to a more comfortable pace.
He surged ahead and that was the last I saw of him until the finish chute. I did manage to stick with the 2:00 pace group for the first 10.5 miles or so as we cruised down Summit and turned south on East River Parkway, but couldn’t push through the familiar final 5K fatigue at the end, slowing down and even letting myself walk for about 30 seconds. Then I zeroed in on the guy in front of me who was dressed in a full suit with a bra dangling out of the back of his pants, and chased him across the finish line.
I came in at a still-respectable 2:01:55, and laughed at the Dole Banana beside me who couldn’t get his medal over his pointy yellow head. The Mylar blankets they were handing out at the med tent proved to be the perfect finishing touch for the many superhero costumes limping toward the Finnegan’s beer tent. We took one look at the beer line, and limped ourselves in the opposite direction, toward a bar stool where someone would bring us beer, pancakes, eggs and tots.
At Keys Café in downtown Minneapolis, miles from both the 5K and the half marathon courses, we spotted no fewer than four other tables where people were proudly sporting their Monster Dash medals. But to read the Sports section of the Star Tribune the next day, you’d never know that around 10,000 people took to the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, running around in festive costumes on a beautiful autumn morning. I guess it’s just the stuff you watch on TV that merits coverage. But that’s OK. In the immortal words of Evel Knievel, “We heroes know who we are.”
Mo Perry is a freelance writer and actor in the Twin Cities. Her column about training for a marathon appeared in the July issue. She blogs whenever the mood strikes at metromag.com. See more of her work here.
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