Jingle All the Way 5k Race Recap and building a Christmas race costume...

 This is now the 4th year in a row I've run the Jingle All the Way (first 8k, now 5k) in DC.  Last year they shortened the race to a 5k that goes past Congress, which has its own Christmas tree.  (It makes the race seem more festive IMHO, but they did it because of construction.)   

Since the second time I ran it in 2013 I've been slowly adding to my costume.  The first year I didn't wear anything Christmasy because I didn't know any better and I was still new to racing.  The second year I added some ribbon hair clips and jingle bells to my bib.  

The third year (last year) I had started on my costume before Thanksgiving, and this is what I ended up coming up with in the end.

My Dad and I pre-race.  I was super excited, as always.

I had a sparkly Santa hat, a light up Christmas light necklace, a skirt I had made with little candy canes and peppermint swirls all over it, knee socks and a turtleneck with snowflakes all over it.  It was pretty tame compared to a lot of the other costumes, but I was super proud of it. 

This is the fabric I used for my skirt.  I even got fancy with the hemline!

 I entered the costume contest and had to go up against somebody who had made a Christmas tree costume made out of the egg crate padding and spraypainted green.  

I had no hope winning against them. 
Yes, they ran the race in the costume AND won the costume contest.

After that happened I was determined to make next year's costume bigger, better and more...everything!  This year I started planning everything a week before Thanksgiving and took pictures of various ideas, watched videos from other Christmas races and Christmas movies, and looked at store bought costumes and ornaments.  This year, I'm even more proud of myself.  For those of you who don't know, my name is Holly.  Christmas is kind of my thing.  It's the one time of year I can totally play up my name and it's somewhat socially acceptable.  
I started by buying some Christmas leggings in July.  I saw them while out thrifting for $2 and had to buy them even though they weren't the best fitting.  They were Christmas.  They were loud.  SOLD!
Next came the ornaments.  I saw stocking ornaments at World Market for $2.50 each.  It then occurred to me that I could probably find something similar while out thrift shopping.  Yup.  Paid 45 cents for two of them.  Done.
After that?  The lights.  With the stockings on my running belt to hold the battery packs and entirely too many safety pins to help attach the wiring I made sure they wouldn't fall off during the race.  A little too much?  Maybe.  But in this race, if you feel like you're out of your comfort zone then you are on the right track for a great costume.
Now to just add a few more bells to last year's skirt, in addition to everything from years past...and here's what I came up with!

I was FULL of the Christmas spirit!  Leggings, skirt with bells, belt with stockings, bells, ornaments and lights, wristbands with bells, bells on my shoes and sparkly santa hat, lights on my jacket and a Christmasy bondi band!

And this is how the whole thing looked when I actually put it on...

I was a little excited!

Overall I had a lot of fun putting the costume together, but I would do a few things different.  For one, I would put one or both battery packs in the small pocket in my leggings.  The stockings were a good idea, but no amount of pinning would keep it from bouncing.  They worked well for holding onto my phone though!  It made it SO much easier to take pictures.  I'd also use heavier thread for sewing the bells onto my skirt.  (I made it home with only 1 of the 4 I had sewn on...oops.)

That being said, the race this morning was a lot of fun.  My Dad and I took the Metro to the Federal Triangle stop and got there about 45 minutes before the gun went off.   We used that time to explore a little bit and check out everybody's costumes.

There were almost 4,500 runners and lots of them were in costume!

About 15 minutes before the gun was scheduled to go off, they told everybody to make their way to the corrals on Pennsylvania Avenue.  My Dad and I made our way to the 10:00-10:59 corral, and I made last minute adjustments to my costume, made sure my Garmin was ready to go and started my Christmas running playlist.
The course itself was pretty scenic and easy to follow because of all the signs and volunteers directing runners.

You run past the Newseum, the Canadian Embassy, the Air and Space Museum, the Old Post Office Pavilion, the Washington Monument...

and the United States Capital Building and the Congressional Christmas tree...

And finishing back where you started: Freedom Plaza.  The area in itself is surrounded by a couple of famous landmarks (the Warner theater and National theater.)  Afterwards it was a little difficult to find water bottles since they were to the left and I veered right when I finished.  The volunteers also seemed to have trouble keeping up with the demand for water as well since they seemed pretty frazzled.  

Overall, I would most likely do this race again.  The race was exactly as I expected, it was pretty well organized, I loved the course, and I had a lot of fun making my costume and seeing everyone's creativity with their own costumes.   I think my favorite this year were the 7 swans a swimming.

Seven swans a swimming!  They have inner tubes!!!

The race did have some hiccups, but nothing totally unusual--people walking/running 3+ people across, walking in the middle of the course, and a high demand for post-race refreshments made it a little difficult to access.  For a lot of people this was their first race, so it's understandable that not everybody knew basic race etiquette.  And naturally afterwards everybody's thinking about food and water, and after cooling off a hot drink was lovely.  (They had apple cider and coffee.)  I would suggest though larger cups for the hot drinks since they only offered dixie cups for them and possibly hot chocolate.  (I like to add a little bit to coffee when cream or milk and sugar aren't available or easily accessible.)