Purposely measured a little long, The Pink Flamingo Classic is not a true 5k (3.1 miles). The official course length is 3.15 miles. It’s all part of the Pink Flamingo Classic tournament weekend in DePere WI. The morning of the 5k, there is also a parade! Coolest part? The 5k finish along the parade route, so if you don’t get to the the point along the course where the parade stars (at the DePere High School) you will become part of the parade as you finish your 5k!

As I mentioned, this is a very small, now key event. No online registration even! You actually need to mail in your registration and payment! Since this was a last minute decision for me, I waited until race day to register. When I went to the registration tent with my form and money, I received my t-shirt and a pink tag to pin onto the bottom of my shirt with my name and age. No race bib. Just a pink address label size tag indicating who I was and what age group I was in. This was a first! How small is this race? I think I heard that they had 150 registered, and this was the largest crowd ever for the event.

I was running my friend Kerri, who runs this event every year - this year her husband was one of the organizers. We were ready to push the pace, have some fun and enjoy the morning. Just after the 2 mile marker, I lost Kerri. I pushed those 2 miles and had to walk part way up the next hill. But I wasn’t done! At this point, I was passing the school and saw where all the floats for the parade were getting ready to start. I was still ahead of them! (in reality you have about 30 minutes to get to this point in order to stay ahead of the parade). It was really cool running through here as people were already lining the street for the parade, so they were cheering on runners as they passed! This really was motivating! I charged on and ended up finishing strong.

After the race, I grabbed a snack and headed over to find everyone else at the parade. The parade reminded me of some of the small town parades from up north but it was still fun! Floats, candy and water fights!

yes, this was a small race, but it was a lot of run, well organized and a run course! Thank you Kerri for telling me about this fun morning! Will I run this one again? You better believe it! As long as I am in town next year, you will see me out there tackling another Pink Flamingo Classic 5k!

You can find the full review and more photos here: http://crazyhamster.run/2017/07/surviving-the-worlds-longest-5k-a-true-story.html

Link to this review