Oak Bay Kool Half Marathon - Behind the Scenes

This past weekend marked the date of two wicked races in Victoria, the Oak Bay Kool Half Marathon and the Shawnigan Sprint/Olympic/Half Ironman Triathlon.  It has torn my heart the past few years that I have had to choose which one to attend each year.  I am good friends with the organizers of both races which makes the decision even more difficult.  However, since I work at Peninsula Runners and we have such a tiny staff to organize such a HUGE race (over 1100 runners!!)  I decided to stick with the Half.I was appointed the Volunteer Coordinator for the race a few months ago and it is one of the biggest responsibilities I have ever undertaken.  I had to match a little over 140 people to race intersections (road marshalling), water stations, relay exchange zones, start/finish line, post-race refreshments, bag-check, pre-race package pickup, and so on.  Luckily, the Help Fill a Dream Foundation gave us about 70 people to help out with the race which we were EXTREMELY appreciative of.  I had to make sure everyone was comfortable with their task, happy with who they were working with, and were able to make it to the race on time!!  I had to call everyone twice, organize a meeting, make copies of information sheets to hand out, and give out t-shirts to all of the volunteers.  And that was all BEFORE race weekend!

Here's a little recap of how my weekend went:

Saturday

9am  go for a beautiful 1.5hr sunny ride

10:30am get a call from Dave to hit the shower ASAP and come to the store because it is CRAZY in there!

11:00am-6:30pm run around the store like a chicken with its he

ad cut off (phoning volunteers, handing out race packages, doing shoe fits, making sales, etc.)

8:30pm the PenRun staff goes to Penny Farthing for a PreRace "Meeting"

10:30pm we realize there are not enough girls for the PenRun Girls Ekidan Relay team ... looks like I'm racing tomorrow afterall! :S

12am PenRun staff comes to my house fo

r a sleepover before the race (my house is 30 second walk to the start line)

Sunday (Race Day)

5:50am alarm goes off, shower, check out the start line

6:30am Sbucks for a triple shot lattee!! (this was the best decision I made the entire weekend!)

7:00am meet up with my Saviour, Miss Sarah Clarke, and we hit the race course, making sure the volunteers are in place, the course is set up, and handing out stopsigns and vests to road marshals

7:30am the runners of the early start PASS US!! uh oh... this is not good! We speed up and start chucking the stuff out of the car window to the volunteers in order to keep ahead of the first runner!! (this guy was definitely waaay too fast to be in the early start!!)

During this time I was also getting numerous phone calls from the police (threatening that they wouldn't start the actual race until I found my road marshals for specific intersections that forgot to show up!!), numerous phone calls from volunteers who couldn't figure out where Windsor street was (!!!???) numerous phone calls from volunteers who couldn't figure out how to mix the gatorade (isn't there directions on the can!!??).  I won't lie here, this point of the race was EXTREMELY stressful for me... however, after shifting a few people around and making a few panicked calls to Julia at the start line, we were able to smooth everything out! :S

8:30am I drove back along the course to let some of the volunteers know that they could leave and open some of the streets.

9:00am BOOKED it over to Windsor park and searched the relay exchange zone frantically hoping that Claire hadn't ran by yet!  Saw Dave run by (His First Half Marathon! and he did the whole thing!! Ya Milne!)

9:03am I get a call from a volunteer as Claire passes me the Relay Sash and I run off talking on my cellphone! All I could hear was "What is that girl doing on her phone!!??"

My leg was the longest (7km) and I got THREE calls from volunteers while I was RUNNING! 

9:30am I run through the Finish Line (still on my phone, explaining to a volunteer that I will be able to change the size of her t-shirt LATER!); I rip off my Relay Sash and hand it to Mike Walsh and then keep running from Oak Bay Ave, allll 

the way back to Windsor Park to pick up my car!!

I then drove back onto the race course to follow the last runner and relieve the volunteers of their positions.  I followed the last two walkers for about 3 hours until Myke, Byron, Adam, and Mari passed us in the Race Course Clean Up trucks.  At this time it was about 12:30pm and I decided to let the last 2 racers know that I had to get to work at PenRun (I was scheduled for 12pm).  I made sure they were OK and didn't need a ride and offered them a map of the course.  There's actually a really amazing write up about this Guy and Gal on the Peninsula Runners website! You should check it out!!  

12:35pm drove back to Oak Bay Ave, helped with the last pieces of clean up, showered and then rushed back up to PenRun.

I went straight to Dolce Vita, ordered myself a double shote latte (that makes FIVE espresso shots in 1 day) and attempted to remain conscious in the store for the rest of the day.

Later on in the evening our staff had a BBQ at Dave's place.  Dave was SUPER happy with how the race went and it was so wonderful for us all to celebrate the AMAZING task we had just ROCKED!!  I was past exhausted by the time we got to his place and nearly fell asleep standing up.  However, I still managed to have a great time and made it home safely without passing out and crashing my car.  I fell asleep in tears last night thinking about what an amazing family and group of friends I have in Vic.  

Congratulations to everyone that raced, volunteered, and organized both of the races this weekend!  You are all amazing!!!!

THANK YOU to everyone that helped me this weekend!!

Thanks for listening and enjoy the sunshine :)