Family Friendly Farm Animal Costume Rentals

This story will be told with little writing, but many photos:

We had about 15 people over for supper on Saturday night (family and blogger friends) to get ready for the TC Marathon the next day. However, only 4 were running the race:

Pharmie, Stu, Robby, and Borsch

We had a meal of pasta and grilled chicken, and we shunned Robby and Stu to the “special” end of the table:

The next morning, the neighbors would have gotten quite a show if they looked out their windows around 6:45 am. Mike was getting ready to head to the start of the race:

We got to the race site, and Pharmie and I posed for a picture:

As we walked along all the streaming cars, I stopped twice to do a little pole dance. How weird is that?

Seriously though, we ran though the congested traffic, and people were honking, waving, and holding their hands out their windows for high-fives. It was awesome. And a cop drove right by me as I was running down the middle of the road, and he just smiled and waved.

Then, for no good reason, the 3 of us animals posed next to a road work sign:

And I started flapping my wings and walking around like a chicken:

Then we posed for some group photos. Here’s the 3 of us farm animals, along with the 2 farm girls:

And here’s our entire group:

Borsch and Pharmie ready to run!

We also had a bunch of complete strangers ask to be in photos with us. And other random strangers were just snapping photos of us. KIDS LOVED US! We would wave and high-five kids left and right! Some kids would just run up to us and hug us. It was sooo funny! In fact, Matt said this before the end of the day: “If I ever turn into a pedophile, I’m buying one of these outfits, because we can’t FIGHT the kids off of us!”

Mike’s cell phone was ringing, so Anne had to dig down his pants to get it. I LOVE their expressions (it’s VERY “Mike and Anne”):

We sent our runners off, and all of us “cheerers” headed to watch the start of the race. I had to gracefully and elegantly hurdle a fence:

Did I say “graceful and elegant?” I lied. Big time.

The race had begun, and Phamie and Borsch were running with about 11,000 other people! Here they are about 2 blocks into the race:

We headed off to the next stop, but not before leaving some manure behind:

So we got to mile 15 on the course, but it was raining. It’s hard to cheer with an umbrella:

It finally let up (after a few downbursts and about an hour of constant rain), so we ditched the umbrellas, and Mike danced:

We were giving high-fives to everyone left and right! Before too long, our runners came by, still all smiles, and still running together:

Just behind them, Bill saw me, stopped, and wasn’t going to start again until we had a photo together. I met Bill this past year: he was the race director for the Winter BeGone Duathlon, and he did the Square Lake Half IM with Pharmie and I a few weeks ago:

We were done at mile 15. Now, we were on to mile 26. Here we are with Jess (a college friend who’s hubby, Tony, was running):

Then we HAD to pose for a photo with Elvis. He had just finished the TC 10 Mile in that get-up:

I suddenly got a huge grin on my face. “Hey Mike. Can I get on your shoulders?...”

The runners loved it.

And then, there was a little cross-breeding going on:

Would that be “peef” or “bork?” I’m not sure.
But I bet it’s DELICIOUS!

We had made some sweet, sweet signs too. Have a look:

I wanted to have a sign like this, but I forget to make it:

It would have said “chicken suit,” but you get the idea...

We started getting hungry, and Matt resorted to cannibalism:

One lady STOPPED just before mile 26, pulled out her camera that she was running with, and asked to get a photo with us 3 farm animals. Crazy! When we were doing that, someone ran by and screamed “Hi Steve! I love your blog!” Who were you? I didn’t get to see who said that!

Then, Pharmie came running by, giving high-fives, about to finisher her 10th marathon and her 9th consecutive TC Marathon!

Borsch was only a few minutes behind her, on his way to finishing his 1st marathon!

Borsch headed towards the line and a group of farm animals

All of the runners we were cheering for did well! We missed Stu at the finish because he was too speedy! Robby and Tony broke 4 hours. XT4 came in just over 4. And Pharmie and Borsch finished in just over 4:30! Congrats to all runners!!

We went down to the finish line to find our runners. Here’s Steph and Pharmie, shortly after Pharmie finished:

And here’s part of our group walking back after the finish:

The finish of the TC Marathon is great: the runners go past the cathedral of St. Paul, down a little hill, and under this HUGE flag over the race course on their way to the finish:

When we were walking back, we stopped in front of some loud music to (awkwardly) dance for a minute:

And then they offered us food (because we danced so horribly well), and because of this photo, I realized that one of my eyes goes “lazy” when I eat:

Why did I post this? It’s so nasty.

Well, we all got back to the car, headed home, and got ready to celebrate 3 birthdays. My mother-in-law brought 2 cakes, the girls got some veggies ready, and I grilled a bunch of meat. We had 6 HUGE pork chops, 3 chicken breasts, 2 steaks, 2 tilapia filets, and 2 salmon filets:

What a great end to a long (but fun) day. Congrats to all the finishers! Anyone thinking about running TC next year? Be on the look out for farm animals...