Remission Run

To say that my personal schedule has been a little busy in the weeks after the marathon would be an understatement. The industry that I work in seems to currently be unaffected by the current economic conditions which is a good thing. The bad thing is I've been a little squeezed for time and the first thing that gets neglected is this blog.

Last weekend I had the pleasure to help with the Bill Crews Remission Run. Our pre-setup crew of Frank Rizzo, William Banes, George Roffe, Jon Walk and I met Friday afternoon. William & I picked up several tables and chairs on the way from Spring to the Park (since they wouldn’t fit in my vehicle and William has a truck). We arrived and Jon, George & Frank were already there working on the course.

Jon & George painted a white line to mark the route around the ball fields. (Jon took one break to dash up to Conroe to pick up the event trophies.)

Frank, William & I marked the trail section with fluorescent green arrows and planned the location of the volunteers for the morning.

The City of Conroe Parks Department had organized work on a section that we were concerned about the weekend before as the park has some construction going on and we were running through the middle of the site twice. They did a world class job organizing with SpawGlass General Contractors. They built and fenced off a path and filled it in with a soft surface and smoothed out all sections affected by the construction. I can’t say enough about how much the City of Conroe Parks Department helped throughout the whole planning process from day one. They have an incredible staff.

I was up early Saturday to pack my little SUV with 6 five gallon water coolers, 1 table, 1 folding stand, the TWRC club tent, 100 traffic cones, 12 PVC stands and a small box of equipment and supplies. This is now the current packing record for my little Ford Escape.

I could write a book about all the things that go on in the 2 hours before a race starts. First the committee members and a few volunteers arrive to set up, then more volunteers for parking. As participants arrive the once quiet park slowly transforms and a very festive atmosphere develops. As the start time approaches all the route volunteers get in place and its showtime.

We originally hoped for 100 participants. Counting the 1 mile kids run and 5K together we were slightly over 300. Great for the charity. A little tough on some of the logistics. We had to stay very organized with parking as we were almost to capacity. Gena & Greg Alvarez were awesome directing volunteers working the parking lot.

We had talked about chip timing early on in the planning but with no sponsors and a possible small turnout we chose to go to a manual system. I organized an 80’s throwback system with a finish chute and pulling tags to match to a timing printout and backup timer and log sheet. (One step above a Run The Woodlands 5K finish procedure). I remember when the Houston Marathon was scored this way.

We did have an electronic timer with a printout function but it proved to be unreliable as it stopped recording after the first runner finished. We were still fine as we had one of the Luke’s Locker employees timing and logging times simultaneously as the back-up. We did have a missing tag that we know of (one runner without a number) who threw us a curveball but all in all it went very well. Our timer from Luke’s, Kerri Snyder & Kelley Golden pulling tags, and Jon matching everything did an incredible job. We will be re-reviewing results with the finish photos as they become available as we do want to place our tagless runner and correct any errors made on race day.

Dana-Sue Crews did a great job putting on an event that captured the spirit she intended from the beginning. It was much more than a 5K and kid’s mile. It was a celebration honoring all who have ever fought cancer. It was a wonderful morning.