As I said yesterday - the Running of the Reindeer is very much like the Running of the Bulls... except different. This is a new event for the Rondy, now in its second year. In spite of all the joking around, no one was hurt last year and I don't believe anyone was this year, either. Which is a little surprising when you watch it. The reindeer and their handlers came from a nearby reindeer farm, from which they had been transported in trucks. They seemed a little skittish around all the noise and the people, which I guess is not that surprising. The race itself was run on 4th Avenue, which had a couple blocks closed off for the event.
Comedy and announcing were provided by local radio personalities from station KWHL, who were extremely amusing. They kept the energy levels up during the wait for things to get started and in between heats - not an easy thing to do with the temperature out (extremely cold) and the crowd level (I would estimate the entire populations of the city was there). One announcer, whose decision to wear what looked like a red velour suit and no other protective gear provided a good percentage of the waiting time humor, put on the best show. Apparently they get the reindeers to run by having males doing the running and putting a female that is in season at the point the males are running to. 'Nuff said. There were five heats, aka sets of people running with the reindeer.
First up was the celebrity heat, which include local personalities mostly. The two national figures running in this heat were Bill Oefelein and Colleen Shipman, who you may know as the other two people involved in the astronaut love triangle. Apparently he is from here, and has moved back. After the first heat one of the reindeer provided some extra excitement by not following the plan - he kind of broke loose from the pack and started running all over the enclosed street. The handlers spent some time wrangling him back to the far end, which didn't make a lot of sense as they then just had to wrangle him back to the start line again. Crazy announcer made a lot of hay of this part of the event, screaming "Oh My God!" and "I just wet my pants!" every time the runaway reindeer dodged or ran in a new direction. As I read this, it doesn't sound that funny, but at the time it was absolutely hilarious.
The second heat was the men, which was an absolutely huge group, most of whom were in costume. After that were women, then couples, then groups. A lot of people were dressed as Santa, which makes a certain kind of sense. Other costumes ranged from superheroes to the Easter Bunny, to a group of cavemen. This last bunch looked more like Picts by the time they got to run, because they weren't wearing a lot, and it was freezing out. I have not ever seen people actually turn blue before, so that was kind of interesting.
As you can see, there were so many guys running, the reindeer were kind of few and far between in comparison! After the second heat, we got too cold, and also we felt we had witnessed the general gist of the event, so we left. All in all, a good time was had by us, and everyone else also seemed to have fun. We will definitely be back next year, and if you can make it at all, you should too!
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