So in amongst all the serious stuff of PB’s and marathon training along came this fun event in aid of a serious cause, the gorilla foundation.

If I am honest the timing of this event was poor for me, I have the Chester marathon in just 2 weeks and my training at present is super intense so in hindsight I would have saved this one for another day, Nonetheless that excited feeling in the pit of my stomach returned once again as it always does on race day.

The concept is that around 500 runners (around the number of silverback gorillas now left in the world ?) dress up in a gorilla suit and complete an 8k run around the streets of central London to raise awareness and each pledge a minimum of £200 in sponsorship towards the gorilla foundation charity.

The cost of this event was £60 and for this not only did you get a race ticket you also got sent your very own gorilla suit which was yours to keep forever, this I found quite amazing for the price.

The suit itself arrived with my race pack a good two weeks before the event. inside the race pack was my race number, a fundraising guide, info about the gorillas and an 8k training plan! I have to say I was initially quite impressed with the quality of the suit, it was better than what I was expecting, it comes in two parts, the body and then the head mask.

A word of caution though, as soon as it arrived I puts it on and began chasing my little girl around the house in it. Not only was she petrified, but the gorilla ‘malted’ all over the house and it takes ages to get the fur out of the carpet with the hoover, seriously, don’t do it.

I wanted to get at least one training run in the suit and the mask but was a little concerned that the neighbours would think I have finally lost my marbles and unsure how passing motorists would react to a full on gorilla running down the road.

I remember reading once about a guy who dressed up as a big chicken to promote K F C in Burnley and he went and stood in the middle of the roundabout near McDonald’s.

At first he said people were tooting their horns, waving at him and smiling but after a while the mood turned sour when one carload of teenagers started throwing chicken mcnuggets at him and it ended up with one local loon getting out of the car and wrestling him to the ground.

The guy was in the paper dressed in the body part of his chicken suit sporting a black eye and looking very pissed off – I was seriously half concerned that something like this might happen to me.

Nonetheless I donned the suit, wore my race number for added security and bit the bullet on thursday when off I went for a 10k run.

Goodness me, I thought training for an Ironman was tough, but the first time you go for a run in a full gorilla suit it feels like you are starting running for the first time all over again.

Its so hot in that suit and I was sweating buckets, I must have easily lost half a stone. plus it’s really hard to see in the mask, borderline dangerous really, but I completed the 10k and thankfully the worst I got from the locals was the odd toot of the horn.

The suit does not cover your hands, so I bought some cheap boxing gloves, and there was a slight gap between the mask and the body but I found that a black cycling snood sorted that out.

On to race day and I was up at 5am to get the 6.55 train down to london with the race starting at 10.30.

Parked in the multi storey right next to Piccadilly train station  on the £5 all day weekend special which was very much appreciated.

Return train tickets to london plus all day tube travel cost me £41 booking well in advance mind, another bargain!

Train ride down to Euston went well, i made the decision to go down dressed in the body part of the suit as I couldn’t be bothered to carry it, this was fine and I wasn’t too hot in it. It annoyed me that you have to pay £5 to get on the train Wi-Fi which I did and then almost immediately met another ‘gorilla’.

That was the quickest  fiver i have ever wasted but swapping stories made the journey whizz by and before I knew it we arrived in London.

I had a good hour and a half to get a accross london, I have always found the staff on the underground awesome, they know everything about everything, no point looking at the map just ask these guys and once again they didn’t disappoint.

From euston you have to get off at banks and then walk to monument.

The race pack had said that monument was the nearest subway station so I knew start was somewhere near but trying to find a local who knew how to get to minster court was impossible, they just do that london thing and give you a look as if to say ‘how dare you ask me for directions’ and seem to take great pleasure in saying ‘no’ to you, then again they are probably sick of being asked.

Time for plan B and I just hung around and waited to spot another gorilla. I must have looked like I had escaped from being sectioned  stood there shifty as hell in a monkey suit, but thankfully before long a bunch of fellow gorillas arrived that seemed to know the way.

I arrived at race start a good 45 minutes before the Claxton was due to sound. I had heard that bill oddie, the patron of the gorilla foundation, was to start the race and was looking forward to meeting him and shaking his hand. I  had pondered, at length, over what I was going to say to him, but still hadn’t worked it out.

You can imagine my disappointment when I was told by the lady on the registration desk that unfortunately bill could not make the race, as he was still in India ‘but I have come all the way from Bolton to meet bill oddie’ I said, and she just laughed at me and said “we were sad that he can’t be here too” before wishing me luck with the race.

The local boutique cafe was offering coffee and a coisant for £3 to athletes so I took full advantage and just milled around the registration area for a bit and took a couple of pics, I said to the guy in the cage (see pic below) that if he didn’t win best dressed i would eat my suit. I also want one of the t-shirts like the guy in the other pic.

Still plenty of time before start or so I thought and was feeling very relaxed.

Before I knew it the guy on the microphone said  “15 minutes to race start and if you have a bag I would join the bag drop queue now”  I looked over and out of nowhere the  queue was half a mile long – as I had a bag to drop, relaxation turned to panic.

Luckily, thanks to some amazing work by the support crew, I was able to drop my bag and then join the rest of the gorillas on the start line with a good  5 minutes to spare.. As I am stood there it dawned on me that I hadn’t changed into my running shoes plus I still had my baseball cap on? Seriously I worry about myself sometimes but I had got distracted chatting away in the queue. I sprinted back to bag drop and thankfully the guys were really sympathetic and helped me to get race ready.

Walking back to the start line I made my way to the back of the pack as i always do and finally I was ready to race. I had forgotten to put my safety pin in that held the suit together at the top but too late to worry about that now. I had a bib on anyway that would hopefully step into pins shoes.

The announcer counted us down and off we went.

There was serious congestion at the start.

This is, after all, a fun run and it must have taken me a good few minutes to cross the start line.

A few hundred yards into the race and people were banging into each other and falling over as it was very difficult to see in the mask. At this point my mask was swiftly moved onto the top of my head as there is no way I was getting injured and spoiling Chester and thankfully around 80% of the field did likewise.

Once this settled down it was hilarious watching the faces of the people in  the posh restaurants as 500 gorillas ran past.

One gorilla was carrying a huge cardboard box? this I couldn’t stop laughing at.

At the end of the day this was a fun run and I would guess that around 75% of the field came with the fun run mentality and quite rightly so.

The roads were very much open and busy so the run was on the pavement which was narrow at times and shared with hundreds of tourists so it was not exactly ideal running conditions especially compared to my recent experience at the Blackpool illuminations 10k where the running course.was a runners delight. The route in london was however very well marshalled with one on every turn and there were twists and turns a plenty on this route!

My strategy was just to chill out and enjoy the sights of London with no real focus on a PB or anything like that.

We ran over tower bridge and past the tower itself which surprised me as it was more like a castle than the tower that I was expecting, around here there were hundreds of tourists as you can imagine but they did their best to move out of the way and most waved and clapped as we whizzed by. (great spot for raising awareness)

It wasn’t long though before I started overtaking people and annoyingly the ego started to kick in as I overtook more and more gorillas. I kept telling myself to stop it as this was meant to be a fun run but I couldn’t help it. This was made worse after about 3k as there was a guy with a microphone calling out our race position, I was 156 out of 500 when I passed him and as soon as he said that to me  I thought I was Mo Farrah and started sprinting..

Why I did this I do not know. I was not even at the half way point and all my training has been distance focused not sprint focused, I started to do the exact opposite of everything I have been doing in training and this is the last thing I should be doing 2 weeks before my first marathon, especially not in a full gorilla suit.

Anyhow I did and shortly after the 5k mark I starts feeling sick. Plus I was starting to overheat in the gorilla suit which I could physically feel was starting to get very wet with all the sweat.

At this point I regret to announce that I caved in and peeled down the top half of my suit and ran the rest of the race effectively in just the gorilla legs. Sorry but there is just no way I could have continued otherwise. My own fault for running too damn fast. I had my tri suit on underneath but How the gorilla  suit stayed up I don’t know, I think the race belt came into its own in this regard.

A few twists, turns and flights of steps? later and i gets to the finish line with the scoreboard displaying 40:34, a very respectable 8k in my opinion given the gorilla suit and the fact that you can take a good 5 minutes off my time for congestion at the start.

I am not sure what my position was but I would guess top 100, maybe even top 70 however i swear I saw the guy in the cage already at the finish line.

There was a decent crowd at the finish line, they clapped me and I clapped them back. I was presented with a medal by a guy with a big gold chain and I asked him if he was the mayor, he said something like I am the mayor of this area, I was about to clarify when I noticed a burly security guard giving me the evils so I took my boxing glove off, shook his hand and said “great pleasure to meet you”

I was given a yellow bag containing some leaflets, a banana, some banana crisps a can of fizzy stuff a posh tea bag and some bamboo water? well, this is london after all.

It said in the race pack that there was to be an after race party with drinks in the bar near registration so I made my way over but the place was virtually empty, then again the guy with the microphone said this was to kick off at 12:30 and it was still only 11:20……..maybe I had finished higher up in the rankings than I had thought….

Also In the pre race pack it said there was to be a prize for furthest travelled, and me coming down from Bolton all 240  miles of it I thought I might have had a sniff at this , but  at the time of writing all quiet on this front. ( I have since discovered that more than one gorilla boarded a plane to race in this event!)

I went and collected my bag, cracked open my banana and was ready for home.

A big thank you to everybody involved in organising this event, the marshalls who were superb, the lovely friendly girls at registration, the guys with the great goodie bags on the finish line, the guy on the microphone, the bag drop crew who were awesome and all of the other runners for creating such a wonderful friendly atmosphere.

If one of the main goals was to raise awareness about these poor gorilla’s then I think we all certainly helped to do that!

Would I recommend this race? absolutely! Its good fun and all for a great cause! Just make sure the race date is not 2 weeks before your first marathon!

Everyone that sponsored me, knock knock….

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