Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.

Gnome run 2k15

This year I was fortunate enough to catch the info that the annual Gnome Run was happening on Sunday October 25th (in Australia! Everywhere else it was on Saturday October 24th). The event is set up to raise funds for the Cleveland Clinic’s Tuohy Vaccine research program for a vaccine for breast cancer in adults. A very worthy cause.

I set my alarm to make sure I wouldn’t miss it, and made myself an adorable (if a bit unhinged) gnome for the journey a few days before to make sure I was ready. Tip for future gnome runners: Make your gnome before the day, and post them an Illustrious Guild Tabard or a Renowned Guild Tabard. These are both bind on account, so you can purchase them on a toon who has the gold (and the rep) and send it over. There is a mailbox at the starting room so you can get it straight away.

On Sunday morning after finding a new home for a certain pony, I headed over to the Scarlet Crusade server 2 hours early to see if anyone was there. Already at that time the place was packed full of little pink haired gnomes jumping about the place. I was immediately invited in to one of the guilds, so my tabard changed to a bright pink. I was following what was happening on twitter and I could see that a few people, like myself, were quite early, but they were all hanging out outside. So I decided to do the handful of quests to get out of the starting area (you don’t have to complete the quests – it was just fun to).

Once outside I could see a lot more people – lots of fun toys were out, like bubble wands and rings and what not. And all the crimson spores! Turns out they’re more pink than crimson, so they were a popular pet choice for the run. I decided to go with my Terrible Turnip for something different. I ran around trying to find people I might know, and eventually ran in to Thor (my bf) who has snuck on without me noticing (which is a pretty poor effort on my part given we’re barely half a meter apart and in the same room…)

Eventually I found Spankyhunter and MsMiggi and joined their lovely group. Here we are posing before the run:

We were also joined by Moogyver and Wingthequick. I was so grateful to be grouped up with them because I had absolutely no idea where I was going!

I saw in chat that Elvine was streaming the event, so I booted up my other computer to watch it at the same time. I’m glad I did, because it helped with knowing where to go and what was happening.

Then, it was time. The call was given, and our little gnome legs were off! Of course, as soon as we started running everyone disappeared. It felt like I was running all by myself. I tried to keep track of where to go by following Elvine’s stream.

I made it to Iron Forge in one piece and got on a tram with hundreds of other pink-haired runners.

We all stopped at the front gates of Stormwind to give everyone a chance to catch up. Because there were so many of us on at a time, the servers were struggling. Some people (including myself a couple of times!) kept getting rubber-banded back to the start. Then we were off again. Our little group stopped to take some pics

We stopped very quickly in Darkshire then headed off again for the last dash to Booty Bay. Unfortunately the sheer load of gnomes running the Eastern Kingdoms was too much for the server and it all went down. Thankfully Blizzard were on to it and we were back up and running again (even if it was from Darkshire again!)

Eventually we made it. I missed the picture of the heart, which was a shame, but you can check out some pics on the official Gnome Run 2k15 tumblr site here.

In Booty Bay I managed to catch up with fellow guildie, Neuroscience! Neither of us look happy about being in the water…

With the run officially over, the only thing left to do was to make a wild dash to Orgrimmar to lick Vol’Jin. So off we all went. It was hilarious seeing some many pink haired gnomes get on to the boat.

When I arrived in Kalimdor I got a whisper from Disneygirl85 who was with the lovely Ottahz (EJ from Girls Gone WoW) and they were just about to arrive. So I hung around to get a picture with these two lovely ladies…

We then made our mad dash to Orgrimmar in the hopes of licking Vol’Jin. I failed… miserably…

The reason I wanted to highlight this for Feel Good Friday! is not just because it was fun, but because it was a wonderful experience that we got to have as a group, and for a good cause. The event ended up having almost 2500 attendees! And has raised over $4000 (so far!) which is more than double the goal for the year. It gave me all the warm tummies being a part of it, and getting to “meet” some of the lovely people I interact with each day on twitter was wonderful. I love seeing the great things this community can do together.

There are a load more pictures in my gallery below to check out. Elvine has a video of his stream from the day which you can check out, and there’s another great one here, too. Visit the official Facebook page for running totals on the fundraising. Speaking of, it’s not too late to donate! If you want to make a donation, please do! Every little bit will help. You can make your donation on the Cleveland Clinic website.

It was a really wonderful even to share with so many people. I’ll definitely be doing it again next year!

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If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.