As I mentioned yesterday, I did the Turkey Trot in a costume. Originally a group of us had started talking about dressing up for this race as soon as we finished last year’s race. The theme was set: Thanksgiving side dishes – mashed potatoes, corn, yams, basically any type of food besides a turkey. So I quickly claimed my costume and started plotting how I could manage to create something that I could still run in!
Fast forward to early fall and we all started talking again about how we should dress up for the race and get coordinated… sometime soon. So last week when I tried to get confirmation that the rest of the group was still planning to run in costumes, I realized that I was probably the only one going to show up in costume. But, I had the poms and the felt and raffia, I couldn’t back out now!
For those of you who can’t figure out what I was trying to be – I’m corn on the cob! I bought the giant poms and dyed them yellow. Originally I was going to dye two different variations of yellow, but when I started to rinse them, the dye started leaking out, leaving the poms with a variegated color which is what I was going for in the first place, so I just stuck with the one color of yellow. I tried the poms in a few different styles and then used a marker to make a dot where I wanted to attach each one. I sewed the poms on and then cut out the two colors of felt into the “husk” and just layered those on top, partially covering some of the poms. I started to sew the husk onto the shirt, but it was hard to keep them laying over the poms the way I wanted them to. I ended up using tacky glue to secure the husk, so this shirt may have a fairly short shelf-life without some alterations. Finally, I tied the raffia around the poms for the silk. The outfit was completed with green tights, running shorts, gloves and headband.
Originally I thought that it might be hard to run in this costume, and while there is some weight to the shirt with all the decorations, it really didn’t get in the way at all. I ended up running almost the exact same pace as last year (5 seconds slower). The biggest challenge for the shirt is just taking it off without ruining anything on it – since it’s a fitted shirt, the added weight / stiffness of the glue on the front has made it a challenge to be able to take off!
