Sickness and Shtick-ness

Since I started taking multivitamins and eating mostly organic foods, the number of times I get sick per year has dropped considerably.  Usually, I only get sick twice a year: once during late winter/early spring and once during autumn.  For some odd reason, I didn't get sick this past fall, so I figured that I'd get sacked with a killer illness this winter.  That didn't happen... until Friday night.

My roommate has been sick this past week with a gastrointestinal bug and missed 1 1/2 days of work.  Friday night, I started feeling sick: strong bouts of nausea and frequent trips to the bathroom.  Thank goodness I didn't have anything planned this weekend.  On Saturday, I slept until 10:00, got up and ate a little bit because I was feeling slightly better, read for a while, then slept from noon until 5:00 in the afternoon, got up and ate a little bit again, then read some more (mostly blogs this time).  I'm feeling a lot better today.  I had the energy to go to church and go for a four-mile walk, plus do a little shopping at Target.  It seems like the bug didn't affect me as badly as it did Judy.

Being sick gives a person time to think about stuff.  Amongst wedding things and figuring out some logistics when my parents visit me next weekend, I thought a lot about running.  I thought about the goals I want to accomplish in my running life (I'll save that for another post), but also thought about what I want to do with my running this particular year.  I've given each year that I've been running a theme:

• 2004 - The Year I Started to Run
• 2005 - The Year of Firsts, Part 1 (I ran my first 3K, 5K and 4-miler)
• 2006 - The Year of Maintenance (I did a handful of races, all 5Ks)
• 2007 - The Year of Firsts, Part 2 (I ran my first 10K and half-marathon)
• 2008 - The Wasted Year (I got injured in early July and lost a good chunk of my running season)
• 2009 - The Year of the Comeback
• 2010 - The Year of the PR (check my left sidebar... you'll see why!)

I thought about how much fun I had walking the Get Lucky 7K.  I enjoyed doing the race with my friends and wearing a costume.  Then, late Friday night, a thought came to mind:

Why don't you make every race like the Get Lucky?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 2011: The Year I Had Fun.

What I need to do is develop a shtick, which is a comic theme or gimmick, if you weren't familiar with the definition.  I need to be like this guy:

Rubber Ducky Man at the 2010 Boston Marathon

The guy behind the rubber duckies is Luke Eichten, and he's also a Minnesotan, like me.  You can check out his blog HERE and check out THIS profile of him courtesy of Twin Cities in Motion (his Q&A starts at the bottom of the second page).

The only problem is, I don't have any idea what I should dress up as.  I don't know if I should change my costume from race to race or stick with one thing.  For major holidays, I can certainly wear something related to the day.  But what about other races?

Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.  I saw a dollar-bin full of bunny ears at Target, but I don't want to look like the Playboy bunny (although I'm sure future hubs wouldn't mind, wink wink!). :)