Gavin McCormack sails over the finish line in The Sun-Herald City2Surf wearing a granny's dress. It isn't any granny's but his late grandmother's violet little number, all the way from England. Her name happened to be Violet.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"I always run in this dress," Mr McCormack confides.
What is striking is the time. He has finished in a creditable 63 minutes. These kinds of attention seekers – the fund-raising funsters in bunny suits and tutus – are usually another 20 to 30 minutes away from finishing the City2Surf, presented by Westpac, the world's most populated running event, for which almost 80,000 people registered this year.
But on Sunday, in the 45th running of the event, Mr McCormack takes the gong as the fastest among the truly absurd. Jono Woodhouse, from Balgowlah, is mildly silly in his Braveheart war paint when he finishes at 58 minutes and 22 seconds, but he doesn't risk the kind of wardrobe malfunction that might befall Mr McCormack, a teacher at the Montessori school in Balmain.
By running in Violet's violet frock, Mr McCormack is changing the world in his own small way. He has run several half-marathons in this dress to raise money for charity. And so work is about start on the rebuilding of 10 homes in earth-quake devastated Nepal, he said.
He and his friends unite as Grannies Run for Nepalese Orphans and raise funds on the Go Fund Me website.
Mr McCormack was just one in the river of humanity that flowed from the city to the sea and completed the course at Bondi Beach, from the fastest athlete across the line – wheelchair road racer Richard Nicholson (41 minutes and 46 seconds) – to the final two entrants to officially cross, 70-year-old Kerry McKee and her son John, in a time of about four hours and 15 minutes.
"We did take a couple of wrong turns and got a little lost in Bondi," Mrs McKee confessed.
Even on a day as deliriously sunny as this, it is the humanity that shines brightest in the City2Surf, with more than $4 million raised for charities.
Catherine Chudleigh ran as Batwoman. A clinical psychologist, she raised $2700 for gender dysphoria research for the Psychological Medicine department at The Children's Hospital at Westmead.
The super humans were there, too. Brad Milosevic, 26, from Kings Park, ran second last year. This year he was the first of the male runners, finishing in 42 minutes and 15 seconds.
He was "stoked".
So was Cassie Fien, 29, who at 46:39 was the first woman across the line. She wants to compete in the marathon at the Rio Olympics. But on Monday she will be back at work in Brisbane.
"I've got to get back to kick some butt," she said. She's in the air force, for one, and she's a fitness instructor, for two.
Richard Nicholson kicked some butt, too. Like the City2Surf, he is relishing his 45th year on the planet. He does it at warp speed in his wheel chair.
"I hit 53 kilometres an hour at some stage today," he said. That could get him a speeding ticket on a school day.
Former premier Barry O'Farrell was low-flying, too, to finish in about 74 minutes.
Right behind him were Anabel and Clara Staples, 23 and 25, who ran as "twin clowns". They finished alongside their father, Max. "He had a quintuple heart bypass 10 years ago," said Anabel. "It's a pretty good comeback."
Prime Minister Tony Abbott finished six minutes after them, in very respectable 80 minutes.
