Go! STL Marathon

My Sunday looked a bit different this past weekend as I got up around 6:30am and was out the door by 7:15am. My destination? The corner of Market and 18th street. The purpose? Volunteering to work the Go STL Marathon. Several weeks back, a college buddy of mine told me he had gotten involved with the marathon and was responsible for organizing volunteers for the relay portion of the marathon. He asked if I'd be interested in helping/getting a group together to man one of the relay stations and I said no problem. Having worked the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis twice during my time there, I loved being in charge of the water stations. It was always busy and exhausting work but worth it!

So bright and early Sunday morning, two of my friends and I began the mile and a half walk from campus to our destination (roads were closed around campus and we figured we could use the exercise) to organize the relay teams at the fourth and final relay station. 2,000 individuals in teams of 4 signed up to run the relay portion of the marathon. The teams would still follow the same path as the marathon runners but they'd only end up running about 6-7 miles each (way less daunting for some!) At my station, the first, second, and third relay runners would congregate and wait for their final teammate to approach before the entire team would join together to run the last 100 yards or so as a team.

Rather than passing out water, our main task was crowd control organizing the relay runners and telling the rando bystanders they needed to find a new place to watch the finish line. We were thrown a curve ball early on in that due to extreme heat (the 80s), the marathon course was shut down thus impacting the ability for the second relay runner to reach the third. Thus, mass confusion and chaos ensued and since yours truly was donning a volunteer t-shirt, that also equaled EXPERT. Umm, not quite! But I did my best to answer questions and appease the runners.

By 12:30pm, I was EXHAUSTED. My legs were a bright red and I wanted nothing more than a cold drink and something to eat. But it was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and I was happy to help out my buddy and cheer on the close to 20,000 runners in attendance!

Cheers.