I just finished my first race as a Race Coordinator for Ragnar. As fun as it was to plan the race, it's such a relief to have it over! It was a great experience. A little background on the race is that it is in Massachusetts. The race started in Plymouth and finished in Provincetown. The course was close to 200 miles long and we had about 5,000 runners participate. As the coordinator the director and I had to go out to Plymouth 2 weeks before the race to make sure that everything was good to go. (meetings, binder packets, filling the uhauls for the volunteers, filling the staff SUV's, AKA a lot to do!)
I didn't get a lot of pictures but here are some that I did get:
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| Binder Packets |
Printed and organized and hole punched all of the papers that go in the binder packets for our SWAT (sweaty, wet, and tired) Volunteers. Then in an assembly line put them together in binders. Oh the Joys!
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| S'mores on the Beach |
The two weeks before the race we stayed in a house right by the beach! It was beautiful! We didn't get to spend a lot of time there but we did have s'mores one night.
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| The Mayflower |
Our course went right by the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. Awesome.
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| Just a day in the life of a race director |
This is a picture of what my car looked like as I was traveling up to Provincetown for a Public Hearing to get permission to use the area for our finish line, before the race. I had to sit up at a microphone in front of 5 city officials and a room full of locals explaining what Ragnar Relay is and what we were going to be doing in their community. It was a great experience! I loved it. I only had one complaint from a local and I answered all of her questions so the finish line got approved. Success!
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The Trailer
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The trailer right after we dropped it off before all of the fun of getting everything out of it started.
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| Filling the U-hauls (thats me in the Royal blue with the hood on) |
We had to fill the Uhauls for the SWAT Volunteers with various things that they would need through out their shift.
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| Start line!! |
And finally the start line! This was taken the day before the race started. It was such a cool location! It was at Miles Standish State Forest in Plymouth. It was beautiful! There are a ton of trees and lakes! We started at this lake called College Pond. It had rained everyday that I was there except for the race days! We lucked out there!
The race was overall a success! But being 15-16 weeks pregnant during the whole thing made it really hard! I couldn't do any heavy lifting and I was EXHAUSTED the whole time. But my co-workers were understanding and helpful and my mom, dad, brother, and husband all came along to help out. It was so great to have them there for help and support. I wish I would have got a picture of all of us there but I didn't. During the race, Nate was the Water Station Manager. My mom and I were the final course floaters. We followed behind the final runner and kept track of where they were. My dad and brother were 2 different Major Exchange Managers. Half-way through the night my mom went with my dad and Nate came with me to "float" the course. That night/ at 3 AM, Nate and I got 30 minutes of sleep. After we rested we jumped to the first floater position and checked to make sure that the first part of the course was being set up correctly. Then jumped to the finish line to help set up and we picked up the 600 lbs of fruit for the finish line. And finally around 8 AM we got to go to the hotel and sleep for a bit. We slept until 10, then went to the finish line. And around 1:00 PM I couldn't be awake another minute so I went back to the hotel to sleep and my family covered for me. I tell ya with being pregnant, I could not have done it with out them. Then I went back that night to help clean up. And it was over!! Such an accomplished feeling!
After that we drove to Washington DC. I will post about that later because this post is already way too long! :)