How many people does it take?

I’m humbled.  I am struck by the enormity of organizing an event as large as the People’s United Bank Vermont City Marathon.  I started reflecting on the number of people that are needed to successfully host an event of this magnitude, and the numbers quickly started spiraling out of control.  I knew from personal experience that just considering the medical team, the number of volunteers on race day is approximately 100 strong.  To keep everyone as healthy as possible, there are 12 MDs, 12 RNs, 35 EMTs, 30 Athletic Trainers, and other blood analysis lab staff available.  These medically trained personnel are located at 17 aid stations, three medical tents, and stationed along the actual course.  Knowing these numbers, I figured that the entire marathon would need something on the order of 1000 volunteers.  To put it bluntly, I was not even in the correct ballpark.  I checked with the RunVermont staff and found out that there are approximately 1700 volunteers needed for this year’s race.  This is a huge number of people, and doesn’t even include the city workers who assist as part of their regular career positions.

Here is an interesting analogy: when we had our house built, we came to realize that for every decision that we knew we’d have to make, there were usually four others that we hadn’t considered.  Everyone knows that a house requires a roof- but do you want metal or asphalt? 3-tab shingles or architectural? What color?  You get the idea… So, a marathon course will require water stops.  Have you ever stopped to think about the logistics of running just a single water station?  Obviously, everyone knows that water stops will need to be staffed with volunteers handing out cups of water, but someone also needs to supply the coolers, the tables and cups, and more volunteers will be needed to pick up all the cups.  That’s just a single water station. The VCM Course has 20 of them!  But did you consider that there are jobs like:

• Locals are needed to ride the shuttle bus, to answer questions from out-of-towners
• Someone to greet the bus riders and welcome them to Battery Park
• People at each of the local hotels to meet/greet the out of town runners
• Someone to hang up banners at the waterfront
• People are needed to handout bibs, verify bib chips, handle the race timing
• People are needed to staff the food tent
• People to handout thermal blankets and medals at the finish line
• Bicycle riding race course monitors
• People to distribute flyers to houses on the race course
• And let’s not forget… crowd control, PA announcers, food vendors, you get the idea…

All of this, just to assure that I can be as successful as possible in running 26.2 miles.  Would you like to help out?  If so, check out the volunteer page on the VCM website.

But there is another interesting point.  Let’s say that each marathon runner has received help from an additional 10 volunteers (perhaps we can go with the oxymoron “involuntary volunteer”).  These people are the wives, husbands, friends, and coaches who have supported our marathon training over the past 18 weeks (or more).  Heck, credit can even be given to the guy who gave me advice and helped me pick out my most recent pair of shoes at the running store! My point, is that if each of the 3600 full marathon runners has 10 people to thank, and the RunVermont staff provides an additional 1,700 volunteers who assist on race day, there are 37,700 people making this race possible.  When you look at it this way, there are a lot of people who should receive credit for getting me to the starting line of the race.  Now the rest is up to me.  Less than two weeks until race day!

On a more personal training note, I can’t help but wonder what happened in my life to make my vocabulary change so radically.  I’m in my taper period and went out for a 12 mile run this weekend.  The weird part was that I kept telling people that “I only have to run 12 miles”.  When did 12 become an “only 12” situation? Very bizarre.  Earlier this week I stumbled across this quote, and it seems to fit the situation…

Until next week,

Greg