So in order to raise money and awareness to protect the very endangered Sumatran Tiger (of which there are only 300 left in the wild) London Zoo put on an event called Steak for Tigers.
What it involved me doing was dropping everything (literally) and streaking through Zoo. Yes....I would be required to run completely naked.
For a few seconds I thought about how daunting that may be but then I thought fuck it...why not enter it?!
I did and only had a few days to go before the "big" event :-)
Turning up there was a good atmosphere and the volunteers had highlighted the way to the start line / "changing" area for the streakers with underwear in the trees which was cool.
As I entered the runners area I was quite surprised to see that there were quite a large percentage of the 250 strong group already standing around naked...it seemed there were only a few using their running foil to cover up until the start so clearly some others had much more experience at this naturist thing than I did.
I registered and was shown to the male changing room. Surely why was there a need for separate rooms for men and women since we had to come out of the room naked and see each other anyway?! This fact was clear at the end when it seemed that many people were changing in the wrong room!
I undressed and went out to the start area which was out of site of the spectators. What I wasn't expecting was to be given tiger cupcakes and 4 shots (1 x rum, 1 x vodka, 1 x gin & 1 x tequila) from the bar. Clearly they knew what a lot of us needed in order to get going!
I made friends with another runner who was by himself ...he wasn't too nervous and seemed to be more embarrassed to say where he worked than why he decided to enter the event. His place of work was RBS....all made sense when he said it!
Before I knew it we were lined up behind a set of curtains and the count down began....the curtains were thrown open and the spectators got a full view of us all as we ran off into the zoo. The run was fun and albeit only very short (300m) it felt pretty liberating and perhaps is the way to run from now on? I finished quite tipsy and celebrated with a Tiger beer and pleased to have also raised just short of £200 for the cause.
Some pictures below....can you spot me?!
