I think I’ll remember my own LIFE

The lovely race report…this time as a volunteer and not as a runner…Go me!

Anyways, my Saturday morning started out with me waking up at the lovely hour of 4:30 AM (yet again I went to bed WAY too late on Friday night and got MAYBE 2 hours of sleep).  But I figured it wasn’t like I was actually running that day so it wouldn’t be awful.  I could always just take a nap after the race.

So I head downtown and seriously this place sucks.  There are NO 24 hour places that sell coffee other than some gas stations (and their coffee is terrible!).  I finally sucked it up and just bought some nasty coffee at the Exxon on the way.  Worst coffee ever.

Other problem, Google maps sucks in this area.  I don’t know why I didn’t think to verify the directions against mapquest this time, but I didn’t.  Luckily I printed out the actual map and was able to use that to get to the water stop…but seriously.  Google maps had me taking an exit that didn’t exist and going the wrong way down a one way street and going in the wrong direction when the highway split.  It was kind of ridiculous.  I finally just took one of the main exits and back tracked my way to where I was supposed to be.  I’m glad I had added in an extra 15 minutes of time to find my way. 

We set up the tables and started filling up cup after cup of water.  I filled about 350 cups of water before the race even started and the other table had about 300 as well.  After that, we started making the gatorade so it would be ready on the return loop (we were the water stop at mile 2 and 8). 

The first half hour was super boring.  Just handed out water and cheered on the people…but at two miles in nobody was really dragging.  They were all super excited to be running so it wasn’t that necessary. 

Coming back was a little more interesting.  People were definitely tired, and there were NO mile markers on the race (ugh I HATE that) so they kept asking us how much farther and we were cheering everyone on (the neighbors must have loved us…we were LOUD). 

I also felt like I was part of the movie Waterboy because half of us were handing out water and the other half handed out Gatorade.  But, we had to yell out what we were giving so people could get what they wanted.  So we had a nice chant of “water…gatorade…water…gatorade”.  I kept thinking in my head, “Gatorade not only quenches your thirst better, it tastes better too.  Gatorade, H2O! Gatorade, H2O!  Water sucks…It really, really sucks.”  It kept me entertained for a while. 

I’m also really glad I didn’t attempt to run this race.  I’m pretty sure I would have come in last place.  The slowest person had a 12 min/mile pace.  That’s probably close to what I run…but not when I’m running 10 miles.  Then I usually slip to a 13 min/mile.  So…I would have been the lone runner left on the course. 

And the race coordinators  removed the cones before the last person had even finished yet (there was no time limit set for this race so they should have left the cones out until the last person finished) and the poor lady had the cop inching along about a foot behind her bringing up the end of the race.  I probably would have cried if that was me. 

After the end of the race I headed back home and slept for about 4 hours and completely messed up my sleeping schedule for the rest of the weekend.  Go me. 

Sunday was then spent watching football (Yay Denver beating the cowboys!) and since the Eagles didn’t play I wasn’t really that concerned about anybody in particular winning and it’s always fun to watch games when you don’t care who wins.  :-) 

Both my fantasy teams played well this week and I’m pretty sure I won both games, but I guess we’ll see how the other teams players do tonight.  Go vikings!  (Actually, I really just want AP to play well and I could care less about the rest of the Vikings). 

Anyways, have a lovely Monday!