The One in the Gorilla Suit

Last year some of you may recall my disappointment at returning home for my brother's wedding - not the fact he was throwing away his bachelorhood but the fact I missed the great gorilla race. What is that? Some of you may ask. Well I will ask the following of you. Given the chance to dress up as a gorilla and then run around central London crossing the Thames a few times with 1000 odd fellow dressed in a similar matter would you dare to take on the challenge? Now I suppose the majority of you are saying "That sounds right up your alley" and indeed you would be right - but I managed to drag in a couple of lads from work as well.

My training consisted of jogging - building up to 10km for about the 2 months before. The circuit was only 7.5km but I figured the extra kms would account for the gorilla suit. This was a little bit of a miscalculation on my part. The costume we had chosen was a pirate theme. Not really sure why we went for this one but it seemed a safe bet we would be the only ones. The course essentially followed a zig zag across the bridges of the Thames (Tower, London, Southwark and Blackfriars) which seemed like a rather scenic route. Unfortunately each of the bridges required a climb of stairs which is not particularly easy to accomplish in a gorilla mask. To illustrate how tricky, my sis-in-law was running for about 20m beside me trying to take my photo and I didn't see or hear her (and you might know she is not particularly quiet - sorry sis).

The run itself was quite good and we did seem to get quite a good cheer from the unsuspecting tourists who probably assumed they wouldn't be taking photos of gorillas that day. I was probably doing quite well until the last km or so when the crowd thinned out and there wasn less urge to push on. I finished in a time of around 50 mins which was about 5 past what I expected although I was still rather proud of my effort.

I think I had probably sweated roughly what a pelican can hold in his beak, which was evident when I took off the ape gloves and a pool of water washed out. Satisfied with our effort we headed straight to the bar for some rehydrating. A couple of beers later and I was being carried to the next bar by all. I did wear the gorilla mask on the tube and scared quite a few of the passengers on our journey.

If we are all around next year we have all vowed to do it again (I have the suit, it would be rude not too) - so any suggestions on a theme would be grateful.