BAA 10K - Volunteer Assignment

Today I, along with other members of CMS, volunteered at the BAA 10k in Boston. We worked Water Stop #4. This was located roughly at about mile 4 on Commonwealth ave. I haven't been down to this area since the Boston Marathon. This is about mile 24 1/2 of the marathon. It felt weird seeing these streets. Images of the crowds throughout these streets came to mind. I can still remember how I felt....

Anyways... we were manning water station #4. We had 6 tables set up with Gatorade ..

and 6 more tables setup with Water

The race started at 8am but we were told to be there for 6am to start setting up. As you can imagine, it takes quite a while to set the cups up, pour water or Gatorade and stack the 3 high on 6 tables. We were pretty much ready to go by race start. We were setup at a corner were we could see the runners come by us, but head out down Commonwealth Ave, then they u turned and come back towards us. So from the time we saw the first runners, we knew we had about 5mins before they came our way.

Here are the lead men... they didn't grab water from us. They were flying!!!

A couple more went by... then I saw Kim Smith coming towards us... I was like OMG, I need to take her picture.....

EPIC FAIL!!!!.... 

I was just left holding water cups and her shadow laughing at me.....

Shortly there after it got really busy. Close to 5500 people ran this race. It was a hot and humid day and our 12 tables of water and Gatorade were just about done by the end of it. We had to start pouring more cups at one point cause we were afraid of running out. With the heat, that would have been bad!!

It was great seeing all the runners compete. I saw a lot of familiar faces running by. Our crew did a great job with the whole set up and clean up of our water stop. The thousands cups that littered the streets were cleaned up in almost no time. The trash trucks and BAA vehicles are not to far behind the last runners so they pick up trash and their tables as they go by. They have a great system.

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 I want to give a shout out to my friend Sandra that ran this race. Even with the heat of the day, she looked good when she came by us! She rocked this 10k!!!

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And also a shout out to The Central Mass Striders!! They do so much for the running community. I am honored to be part of such a great group.

We all got BAA 10k volunteer shirts too!!

This was a blast! I can't wait for the next one!!