Glass City – Road Crew committee (and it’s my b-day!!)

Before I get into this post, I have a shameless plug – it’s my birthday (Friday)!!  My 50th birthday to be exact!  Remember when 50 years sounded really old??  Well maybe for some of you it still does, but heck, 50 isn’t so bad.  Ask me about that again after my half marathon Sunday. haha!

Now let’s talk about the Glass City races coming up!  Lookie – I got a new top!

Back in November 2017, when I heard that the Glass City was still in need of a few people to head up committees, I was intrigued.  After hearing the selections, I knew my immediate choice: Road Crew! As long as it didn’t involve me getting up at 2am on race day and putting cones out, I was good with that committee.

The other option was for the new resource this year, Relay Team Shuttle Buses.  A logistics job??  Oh god, not the job for me. If you know anything about me, you know I’m always late for everything.  That’s just the way I’m wired! I actually showed up at group run early (because I was a coach that day), and I went out for warm up run (before the long group run!) because I felt like I wasn’t fully making use of my time!!  But I digress…

My job consists of three things-

1. Marking all mile markers (permanent paint) on each course – marathon, half marathon and 5K.
2. Put up banners throughout the neighborhoods which the race goes through, to advise them of delays on race day – there are 18 banners.
3. Mark portions of the courses with turn arrows (chalk paint)

The one caveat with this job is that it’s highly weather dependent, and is on a strict schedule, because people want to get out and preview the course weeks before race day.

So in mid March I got my first volunteer to join me in mile marking.  Husbands are amazing volunteers!! So helpful 🙂 This task reminded me a lot of The Amazing Race, because we were giving a hand drawn map with very specific directions to the marks (surveying “nails”).  Directions such as “30ft NW of light pole on S corner of intersection”. Many of the miles were still marked from when the course was certified in the fall, and we refreshed those marks, but some were very worn off!  It was like a treasure hunt.

We found mile 19!

The community banners pretty much need to be put up on the Sunday before race day.  We want to give the drivers enough time to see the signs, and not be surprised. It’s the neighborly thing to do!

Unfortunately it was cold and rainy on the scheduled day!  Luckily I had another helpful volunteer that endured the rain and pounded all of the stakes in the ground for me.  It took a few hours, and we were soaked, with freezing hands when we got done. But we did complete the task! This was a pretty easy task – mostly because I was just holding the signs for positioning purposes, but it was actually good that the rain softened the ground and made the task go by fast.

Finally, the task of chalking arrows on the course.  I will admit, I spent many days wondering about this task.  How long would this take?? Painting arrows at every turn over all of the race courses??  It seemed like a huge task. So I got another volunteer and split the task. Alan and I took a portion of the courses, and spent the morning drawing arrows.  Not every corner needed a turn (thankfully!) and were done within 4 hours I think.

If I say so myself, we did a great job!

And then it rained.  All weekend long. Non stop rain. The chalk does last several weeks, but it does need some time to “cure” and get “stuck”, so most of our work had been washed away.  The arrows were still faint, but I don’t want anyone getting lost when I’m in charge, so we marked them again.  This is what we woke up to this morning.  Seriously??  When am I going to get my job done??  No worries, the roads were dry by 10:00am.

The second time around was even easier to mark the course because we were familiar with all of the locations, and we just had to darken the faint arrows.  Can you see the faded arrow in this picture?

I’m so thankful my husband, and other volunteers, helped me out!

I’m calling year 1 of my Road Crew committee job a success!  Hopefully the race director feels the same way. 😉 If you’d like to help me out next year, I’d love to have you join me!

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Q:  Have you ever been in charge of marking a race course, or maybe organizing a water stop?

Q: How’s the weather near you?

I don’t think spring will ever be here!

Q:  What birthday treat do you request for your birthday?

I requested a cake that I found on a blog this year.  My daughter made it for me!  It has ganache dripped off it.  I’ll give you a picture next post.  It looks awesome 🙂