Yesterday was the Nike+ Human Race 10K – an event of superb mass-marketing that involved 25 major cities all around the world hosting races in the name of uniting humanity. Kinda wish I'd known about this earlier, 'cause I've been feeling that as an official Austinite it's now my duty to train for some sort of city-wide athletic competition, most likely some kind of long-distance running since right now the other two ever-popular triathlon events of biking and swimming don't seem appealing to me at all. And though I didn't run in it, props to the more than 14,000 people who flooded downtown to take part. That means (according to the guy with the mic last night) that Austin had more participants than either Chicago or New York, and just under Los Angeles. Plus, Austin was the 2nd fastest city in the world. I knew I picked a cool city to move to.
Even more exciting though was the post-race entertainment. I'd written earlier about how Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals were headlining the concert, and that supposedly only race participants could attend. I decided to take my chances though, figuring that as long as the show was outdoors, then surely I could find a way to get in. And indeed, the stage was set up at Congress & 11th in front of the Capitol, and the one small sign stating "Racers Only" was doing absolutely nothing to keep outsiders from entering inside the guardrails (as if standing outside the guardrails would have been very far away anyways.) So to my complete delight, I found myself about 6 rows from the stage for a totally free Ben Harper concert – so great! Even though the show wasn't that long, Ben definitely lived up to his reputation for putting on a stellar live performance – steering away from his more mellow tunes to do mostly intense, upbeat numbers (though personally I love his mellow acoustic stuff the best.) Personal favorites were "Into the Colors", a cover of Bill Wither's "Use Me Up", and "Black Rain" (appropriate since thoughts were definitely with New Orleans.) He closed with "My Own Two Hands", which had everyone dancing with raised arms for a pretty inspiring ending.
The only thing I could possibly complain about was that the majority of the people at the concert HAD actually ran the 10K, so the amount of B.O. was pretty horrible at times, and making my way through the crowd meant touching way too many sweat-drenched t-shirts. But, I couldn't hate too much given the fact that they'd just ran for 6 miles straight while I had been sitting in the AC… plus, being Austin, most of the B.O. was hidden by an even more prevalent smell of weed. All in all, it left me feeling quite a bit of affection for Austin for making such an event possible. A conversation later in the night would again have me missing Jazzfest and brass bands and all the beautiful music of New Orleans, but, nonetheless, the ATX is definitely growing me :)
No comments:
Post a Comment