Lessons learned at the water stop

Yesterday, I was at the Minneapolis Marathon, but not running in an event - I was volunteering with TCRE  (Twin Cities Running Experiment) at the water and powerade station.  I went into this thinking it would be cake walk and just a good way to connect with other human beings.  And while it was honestly a lot of fun - I did a learn a few things in the process, that really gave me a new appreciation for volunteers.

1. Setting up water cups for 3000+ people is actually a pretty time consuming activity.  Who knew?

2. The volunteers have a long day too.  I got to my station at 6am and left around 12:30pm... granted I was one of the first to arrive and last to leave.  Other came and went at different times.  Staying as long as I did was partially my choice to be able to give some of the last runners a chance to get water too.  Having someone say "thanks for being here" after the sag wagon had passed was really it's own reward.

 3. Go to the second water table if you can.  The first water table always gets bombarded - and starts to bottle neck.  The second table will have more water and you won't have to wait.

4. Volunteering is a lot of fun.  I met other runners, got to "talk running", got some sun and all-in-all had a pretty good time.

UPDATE: One other cool thing about volunteering was seeing people I knew in the race!  Really makes the experience less dull - and I honestly haven't done enough spectating - so it was fun to jump on that bandwagon.

Special kudos to Kelly, Corryn, Amanda and Meredith who ran the relay.