Rocket City Marathon 2009

December 12, 2009

WOW! What an exciting event we had here in Huntsville today. The Rocket City Marathon.

I casually volunteered to help out in some areas of the marathon this year. I don’t know how I came about to volunteer for the various activities that came up but let me say that I had a blast.

Last Sunday afternoon I delivered flyers to my designated mile of the marathon course. You know, to remind the residents of the marathon traffic that was going to be coming through today so they can plan their schedule accordingly. Of course, being the rookie, I was assigned the mile with all the condominiums, town homes, and apartment complexes. I didn’t mind, I had fun. I recruited The Girl to help out. LOL

The historic running tour was last night. I signed up to be the 2-miler tour guide. While we had a good turnout of runners, we also had a good turnout of tour guides. I didn’t get to take anyone out on a running tour because we had plenty of people who signed up. My feelings were not hurt. I was a little nervous anyway but it was nice to be there for a “just in case” type of thing. I will gladly sign up to be a tour guide next year as well and now I have a whole year to study up on my Huntsville history!

Then, this morning at 0700 I met several seasoned marathon volunteers to help out with a water station. We had to set up the tables, get water in the gigantic coolers and then fill about a gazillion little paper cups. We were the first water station at mile marker 3. The head of the pack came breezing by and opted out of the offered water but we knew that would happen. And then the rest of the pack came through! LOL WOW! How exciting. After everyone was through we then had to break everything down and clean up and pass the torch to the people at mile marker twenty five.

We then made our way to the finish line. Rocket City marathon prides themselves on putting that personal touch on the end of the race by making it a point to have every single runner who crosses the finish line be greeted by a person who gives them a blanket to wrap in, hands them their medal, and this year they also were given a hat. Then, that same person escorts the runner to the food, water, and medical stations. I was excited and pumped up to be there and was looking forward to doing this! Yeah! WOOT! But then the conversation between the volunteers started to turn to matters of people collapsing. Collapsing? Huh? People will be collapsing? WHOA, wait a minute, I hadn’t thought about that!

The Rocket City marathon is a qualifier for the Boston marathon and some of the runners would be pushing themselves more than usual, so yeah, people may come across the finish and line and start collapsing.

Collapsing?

Um no. I can’t do that part of the volunteering. My nurturing skills are something less than desirable. So I excused myself and moved over to be a “bouncer” for the end of the race. I will help with crowd control thank you very much.

At any rate, it was very exciting to be a part of something like this! I got to see the winner cross the finish line, saw him up close and personal. His name is David Riddle and he’s a local. Awesome!!

Watching the runners come in was inspiring and scary; inspiring to see them come in and to witness their family members being there waiting on them and cheering them on, hugging them when they arrived at the end of a 26.2 mile run safely. Scary because I watched three runners be taken away on stretchers. Uh oh, what have I done by signing up for a half marathon myself? What on earth was I thinking? Oh boy.

Nonetheless, volunteering for this marathon was so much fun and can’t wait for next year! No, I’m not running it next year but I’d volunteer for it again in a second. Maybe one day I can aspire to run a marathon but right now I need to stick to 10Ks and concentrate on getting through my first every HALF marathon in February.

For more information about the Rocket City Marathon you can click on the link and you’ll be taken to their main website.

One last thing, our people at Fleet Feet TOTALLY ROCK! Check out their Fleet Feet Racing Blog.

Who is c.a. Marks you ask?  This is me. I haven't thought up a clever enough "byline" yet to post here. Maybe I'll run a survey.

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