Wizard of Ooze at the Live Great Run 2014

So this first started when I stumbled upon the information about Live Great Run organised by Great Eastern way back in August. Not into long runs at that time yet, I wasn’t adventurous enough to try any run with double digit distances, so when I saw 3km I got excited. The 3km in Live Great was a buddy run, so I asked Ika (the only person I knew of at that time who was into runs), and together we convinced Jocey and her colleague Choy Har to sign up too.

The 3km buddy and family run, being a non-competitive run, was a themed run – and this year’s theme was Superheroes!

The four of us signed up as two pairs of buddies, but we decided to go with a group concept suitable for a foursome. After throwing around many fun (and absurd) ideas, we suddenly came to a common agreement to do Wizard of Oz characters. We even have ourselves the same team names for the two pairs (which must have confused and/or annoyed the organisers, hehe): Wizard of Ooze!

Why Ooze? Actually I don’t know. I think we just wanted a funny name.

None of us wanted to be Dorothy though, so we decided to pretend that we lost Dorothy and were looking for her before we headed to the yellow brick road. Choy Har wanted to go as Toto (Dorothy’s dog), Ika would go as the lion, Jocey as the scarecrow, and I as the tin man.

Admittedly, Wizard of Oz characters were not superheroes. We may have turned it into an opportunity to dress up in costume… but hey, it wasn’t that far off from Halloween!

The discussion died down as time passed and other runs came up. And of course, work took priority. When the run suddenly loomed around the corner, to be honest, we didn’t really get our costumes done properly.

The shirt that came in our race pack was bright yellow, and of the four of us, I was the only one who couldn’t wear it, because it wasn’t suitable for my tin man character. I was going to pull together the simplest (and possibly sloppiest) tin man costume ever, but fortunately Elisha offered help, and made it less sloppy. She helped me make the huge cardboard heart which I could pin on my shirt, and she spray painted a plastic funnel as my hat.

RUN DAY 9 NOVEMBER 2014

The run kicked off at Menara MATRADE, with the 12km runners starting the run. The 3km runners were flagged off soon after. The 3km category was of course filled with kids – many of whom started running before the gun! But the organisers let it slide because it was a non-competitive fun run.

The 3km category was filled with superhero costumes – almost everyone dressed up! There was even a huge group (registered under the same number, as evidenced by their matching bibs) who came dressed as Marvel comic superheroes.

We stuck around for the prize-giving competition, hoping we would win something. Ika and I didn’t, but Jocey and Choy Har did!

Here’s where things went a little sucky though… it was announced that Jocey and Choy Har had won placings for TWO categories – 2nd place for biggest age gap (RM400) and 3rd place for best headgear (RM300). You can imagine of course how excited they were… only to be told during the registration (to claim the prizes) that there was a mistake and that they only won for the category of best headgear. We weren’t sure how the organisers were going to call up the actual winners since announcements and photos onstage were already taken. But nevertheless, it was not a pleasant feeling for them to have a prize taken away.

All in all, fairly good event in spite of the screw-up in the prize committee.

If I were to join again next year, I’ll probably go for the 12km though… less to think and plan in terms of costumes. Just need to show up and run!