USAFit Marathon in Sugar Land

Today I got to experience the other side of running a marathon or half marathon . . . as a volunteer!  I am here to tell you that volunteers are so integral to the success of any race.  Every race I've been in, volunteers have handed me cups of water, spoken encouraging words, pointed me along the course, and slapped me high fives.  Today I got the experience being the encourager!

I have to be honest and say that the conditions for the USAFit Marathon were not ideal.  It was about 45 degrees outside, and it was raining to boot.  I overslept my alarm by about thirty minutes, and ended up getting to race area about 45 minutes prior to start time.  I had planned to be there about an hour to an hour and a half earlier.  Even as I got in the race area, the traffic conditions were terrible.  I sat at a stoplight, waiting to turn off the 59 feeder road, for approximately half an hour.  I felt stressed, and I wasn't even running!  I watched runners jump out of their cars (obviously they had rides) and begin to run in the rain towards the starting area.  I felt bad for those runners, but I especially felt bad for the runners who ended up parking where I parked.

I parked in a gravel parking area, approximately 1.5 miles past the start line.  Up until 7:15 or so, I watched runners park there as well, and then walk or jog 1.5 miles to the start line, to then run either 13.1 miles or 26.2 miles.  Meanwhile, I was helping the rest of the KatyFitters to get our water station going . . . we had a Fiesta theme, and we had lots of awesome decorations, but with the rain we were not able to use a lot of them.  I had brought the stereo, to blast music for all runners.  Other people were supposed to bring their iPods, but we ended up having to use my running iPod Shuffle to provide us with music.  I have to say I was extremely embarrassed to have my running tunes blared out loud for all to hear.  I'm a bit of a teenybopper when it comes to music - if it's in the Top 40, it's probably in my iPod.  So that was a bit embarrassing - especially the fact that my songs were not edited for profanity.  Yep, David Getta's "Damn, You's a Sexy Bitch" was just about rock bottom mortifying for me . . .

In any event, I had a lot of fun volunteering with my fellow KatyFitters, and got to cheer on some of my friends along the way.  When I was standing out there handing out water and Accelerade, having not had my own first half marathon experience, I was choked up and felt tears for all of the runners.  What an awesome accomplishment!  Congratulations to all finishers and all participants!