The Bunny Hop 5K was held Saturday morning in downtown Columbus. This is a new race started by the new race company, Riff Raff Productions.

The packet pick up was in the bar of a Buffalo Wild Wings. It’s a novel idea — I’ve never picked up a race packet in a bar before. It was nice that a portion of the proceeds from food sales that night went to a charity called A Kid Again.

At packet pickup we received a cute cotton T-shirt, a wrist band to get into the after party and bunny ears! The men were given blue ears and most of the women were given pink (some got blue). I have so many technical shirts that don’t fit, I was happy to get a cute cotton shirt that fits! (I wore it the rest of the day with blue jeans.)

Ten o’clock is a pretty late start, but because the after party included a Mexican buffet, with the option to buy alcohol, it was probably necessary.

There were fewer than 300 participants in the race and the vast majority wore their bunny ears! Some people even wore costumes — I saw one Easter egg and a giant yellow Peep. There were several people in tutus.

Most of the participants seemed younger than me and the other Buckeye Striders. There was a wide range of participants but most seemed young.

The race was just a 5K. There were plenty of volunteers to keep you on course. There were no mile markers — mile markers are pretty standard in races. There wasn’t a single water stop, which was not a big issue Saturday, but for most 5Ks there is typically at least one water stop.

It was a nice course along the river in downtown Columbus, but a lot of races in Columbus use part of this trail. (The race I entered the day after was nearly the same route.)

After the race we grabbed a bottle of water and a plastic egg and went to a Mexican restaurant for the free buffet. Soft chicken tacos, rice, beans, chips and salsa. It was a great idea, but it took quite a while for people to get through the line. It was fun that we could also order margaritas! There were filled plastic eggs everywhere — one report was 3,000 eggs! Some had candy and some had coupons to local businesses. I would have hated to have to fill them!

Riff Raff has plenty of additional races planned for the year and all of them have fun and creative touches like this one. Though there were a couple of minor glitches, I think they will be OK once they work them out and figure out who their market is.

 

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