Gorilla run

He teaches court reporting at the College of Marin. She is a stay-at-home mom. Sunday marked the 39th wedding anniversary for Tom and Candace Holub.

So the couple from Vallejo celebrated by waking at 5 a.m., donning gorilla suits and masks and heading to San Francisco, where they joined hundreds of other people dressed as the largest of the apes for a charity run through Golden Gate Park.

The Holubs were among more than 400 people who turned out for the first Great Gorilla Run through Golden Gate Park. The 4.3-mile race, which began shortly after 9 a.m., was billed as good fun for a good cause: The Gorilla Organization, which sponsored the race, was established under a different name nearly 30 years ago to save endangered gorillas in Africa. There are only about 700 mountain gorillas left in the wild, the organization says.

The event started in London in 2003 and has raised about $2 million. The San Francisco gorilla run was the organization's first such event in the United States. The number of runners was limited to just over 400 because the organization ran out of gorilla suits -- provided with the $100 entry fee.

Jillian Miller, executive director of the Gorilla Organization, which was inspired by the work of the late American primatologist Dian Fossey, took in the spectacle of people dressed as their closest living relatives. Smiling, she said, "What is it about gorilla costumes that make people so happy?"

As if wearing a gorilla suit on a Sunday morning weren't unique enough, outfits were heavily accessorized. There were gorillas in leopard thongs, hemp flip-flops, Elvis suits, sunglasses, wigs, bonnets and Viking horns. There were gorillas with hula hoops, gorillas dancing to "SexyBack," gorillas on rollerblades and gorillas pulling red wagons.

"I had wanted to be Al Gore-illa, but the Al Gore mask didn't work over the gorilla mask," lamented Mike Nicolls of Palo Alto. He settled for a tight white Elvis pantsuit pulled over the gorilla suit. "I think the difficult thing will be running with the mask, as it's kind of hard to see out of."