Volunteer Saturday!
I had the fortunate opportunity to volunteer at two (2) running-related functions on Saturday -- Sarah Graybeal's Yuri's Night 5K at Challenger Seven Memorial Park in Webster and the Marathon Kids Final Mile event at Dyer Stadium near Hwy. 290 and Interstate 610.
On the latter, HARRA had been requested to provide volunteers at the Kick Off event back in October as well as the Final Mile event yesterday. As a result, Marathon Kids added HARRA's logo to the back of all of the event T-shirts!
"We added the HARRA logo to the back of the Houston Marathon Kids Finisher T-shirt," Director Kay Morris told HARRA president Tom Stilwell. "Thank you for your extraordinary help and leadership for the free running/walking and nutrition program for the little Houston children. We look forward to seeing you out there on April 1."
I was up and out the door heading south to Clear Lake at about 5:45 a.m. (But before I left, Dad had a bit of a mischevious nature with it being April Fools' Day.) I did send Sarah an e-mail wake up call since she had missed two (2) Clear Lake races last year because of a faulty alarm clock; however, my wife and daughter both needed to be up before I left so that they wouldn't oversleep. I used the "Hey, it's 7:30 a.m. routine" on my wife and quickly she realized what I was up to, but I really took it to another level with Waverly.
I went in to her room where she was sound asleep. I sort of hollered, "Waverly, it's 7:30 a.m!" She popped up, clearly panicked about potentially missing her competition. And, of course, I couldn't let her go more than a second with that thought so I quickly belted out "April Fools!" I gave her a big hug, told her that I loved her and reminded her that I was proud of her (and, in addition, of her hard work) regardless of whether she placed in all three events or none of them. As I left her room, she told me to tell Sarah "Hi!" and that she wished she could of been there to help out!
When I shared the story with Sarah at the Park after the race when Sarah asked if I wanted a race T-shirt for Waverly, Gavin's wife, Jen (I think), chimed in, "That was mean!" I said, "Yeah, I know!" Jay Lee of On The Run Texas was there and chuckled. (Jay helped Sarah out once again with the timing for the race and the finish line setup.) If I didn't have plans to go help out at Marathon Kids, I probably would have stopped into the store afterwards to see Christopher Bittinger and/or Vera Balic, who both work for Jay and Kevin Landry.
Sarah put me in charge of "course management" where I got to work with individuals from the Clear Lake Amateur Radio Club. These gentleman are HAM Radio operators who manned various parts of the course to make sure runners were safe and went in the right direction.
At about 7 a.m., Sarah took me out to the farthest point away from the start/finish area so that I could see the trail portion of the course (map). Not that I couldn't comprehend her verbal explanations, but this course was one that I needed to see to understand how it actually was to be run.
She dropped me off and after running the trail portion, I realized that I needed about 20 cones to mark off the portions where runners were supposed to go. I put three (3) cones towards the end of the trail part where runners very easily could have gone left and cut a significant portion off both one or two loops (Sarah said this actually happened in '04)!
Then I went back to part of the course where it left the park road and became "multi-terrain" as fellow Houston Running Blogger Jennifer Kim described it!
There had been a white chalk line that had been out there before (possibly for other runs or cross country meets), but it had faded. Therefore, I tried to place a cone far enough away from each other so that the runner could always see the next one (in case I couldn't get myself into position in time.) The only part of the course that was confusing was where runners had to run up behind a hilly knoll (much bigger than the "grassy one" in Dallas), over and down it and to the left.
However, I couldn't get to those back cones fast enough (and there were no Luis Armenteros' running even), which included running up the knoll, after leaving a part of the course to make sure that the runners knew where to go.
As I got up on the knoll, I found out the leaders missed the far two (2) cones that I had placed and turned right past an earlier cone and made a semi-side charge up the knoll. (Which I thought made it harder than I head-on charge like you would do in a hill workout!)
By the time I got to the top of the knoll to monitor runners, the lead runners were at the top of it and almost made a wrong turn directly down the opposite side of the knoll, but I told them to turn right, go through the middle of the knoll and back down it. (Crisis averted!)
I saw Jen on her first loop and cheered her on, but I don't think she heard me as she had her headset on -- or she wanted to block me out!
After the lead runners came through the second time (without having to go through the hill again), I actually was able to run with Jen for about half a mile.
As Sarah indicated in her post, everyone that I saw, cheered on, encouraged, et. al. on the course was having a wonderful time despite the first loop being run in truly hot and humid conditions (the second loop runners actually had a bit of a cool breeze)!
Sarah was a little disappointed that there weren't more numbers, but I agree with Rick Cook's comment on her blog that there was simply a glut of races on Saturday (and she had already made the choice not to go head-to-head on the 8th with the Bellaire Trolley Run).
Part of my plans for the Houston Running Bloggers in '07, even though I won't be president, is to initiate an "Up-And-Coming" race series that will include some events that could benefit from a bit more traffic. Yuri's Night 5K could be part of that as well as May's "Race of the Month", Trot for ToMagWa 5K in Tomball on May 6th of this year.
Because of not wanting to rush out from Sarah's race and a little bit of traffic getting all the way to the Northwest Mall area, I got to Dyer Stadium at 10 a.m. just as the Marathon Kids program was getting started. I saw super HARRA volunteers Noah Matthews and Theresa Drago (of the Striders) and Dr. Bob Hoekman in action and listened to some of the opening comments.
I didn't want to just get back in the truck and head home (although I could have) so I went to find someone to see if they needed anymore help. I ran in to a gentleman named Chris McClung and he said, "Why don't you go see that lady over there!" She was instructing the youngsters and their parents before they headed out on the track to finish their 26.2 miles for the period (to complete the program). So I joined a couple of young ladies as we helped make sure that they didn't run from the bleachers to this staging area and helped leading them in "Tigger bounces" (Cassie, you should have been there) and a couple of 10-second calf stretches on each leg.
The running portion of the program probably took no more than about 40 minutes for them to complete. I ended up staying until about noon working with volunteers from HARRA, CVS Pharmacy and Whole Foods Market to make sure that the entire football field was cleared of tables, bottles of water, water bottles, pretzels, chairs, pop-up tents and anything else.
It was a great experience and I had a great time!
The most interesting thing that I learned was that a local runner that I know of, Karen Nyberg, was an astronaut!
She was introduced during the early part of the program and she shared with the students that during mile 21 of the Houston Marathon this year that she remembered the Kick Off event from October and the sacrifice that the kids were making and that helped her get through a tough stretch of the competition.
I only knew of Karen as a talented runner who was one of the few HEB Texas 10K Challenge finishers last year. She was there in San Marcos at the Country Roads 10K and I remember seeing her finishing the 25K downtown last October as well.
Karen signed the kids' finisher's ribbons for them if they wanted!
I walked over and talked with Karen a little bit and I told her that I was impressed of her humility and that she never brought that up. She said that she was hoping to be assigned to a future Space Shuttle mission in the next two years. Her official Johnson Space Center bio is here.
I couldn't remember if she had registered for Boston this year (knowing that she posted a qualifying time in Houston in '06; 3:33:42); however, she pointed out that she ran Boston in '04 (3:47:33) after recording a qualifying time at Motorola in 2003 (at 33, 3:29:16).
Finally, I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss this! I'm continually flattered by those of you who take the time to frequent this blog. It reminds that I need to keep pushing doing the things that I'm doing -- as far as covering the sport.
Some of you come here to find ways to bust my ass. Others come here for what I hope to be good information. Some tire of the minutia. Others love it! So, the way I see it, there's an audience here for everyone!
I had a nice young lady (and I say young because she's 24 and I'm 39, although I don't feel it), Michelle Woloszyn, come up to me at the Yuri's Night 5K, introduce herself and told me that she enjoyed reading the blog and the things about Waverly, etc.
I asked her if she ran the course today (I didn't remember seeing her, but I could have missed someone) and she said that she was still recuperating from Houston as her knees took a bad beating during her 4:34:21 effort in January.
I don't see what I do as a big deal; however, I appreciate those that take the time to say "Hi!" It gives me the opportunity to count another runner as a friend -- plus it gives me the opportunity to publicly compliment others and to share some things about them with the rest of the world. Michelle indicated that she knew Sarah from NASA so I took the opportunity to do a little web search and here's a bit more information about her. (Michelle, as a Penn State fan, I'll forgive the University of Michigan flag!)
As you can see, I had a great time in the sport on Saturday! I hope you did too!
On the latter, HARRA had been requested to provide volunteers at the Kick Off event back in October as well as the Final Mile event yesterday. As a result, Marathon Kids added HARRA's logo to the back of all of the event T-shirts!
"We added the HARRA logo to the back of the Houston Marathon Kids Finisher T-shirt," Director Kay Morris told HARRA president Tom Stilwell. "Thank you for your extraordinary help and leadership for the free running/walking and nutrition program for the little Houston children. We look forward to seeing you out there on April 1."
I was up and out the door heading south to Clear Lake at about 5:45 a.m. (But before I left, Dad had a bit of a mischevious nature with it being April Fools' Day.) I did send Sarah an e-mail wake up call since she had missed two (2) Clear Lake races last year because of a faulty alarm clock; however, my wife and daughter both needed to be up before I left so that they wouldn't oversleep. I used the "Hey, it's 7:30 a.m. routine" on my wife and quickly she realized what I was up to, but I really took it to another level with Waverly.
I went in to her room where she was sound asleep. I sort of hollered, "Waverly, it's 7:30 a.m!" She popped up, clearly panicked about potentially missing her competition. And, of course, I couldn't let her go more than a second with that thought so I quickly belted out "April Fools!" I gave her a big hug, told her that I loved her and reminded her that I was proud of her (and, in addition, of her hard work) regardless of whether she placed in all three events or none of them. As I left her room, she told me to tell Sarah "Hi!" and that she wished she could of been there to help out!
When I shared the story with Sarah at the Park after the race when Sarah asked if I wanted a race T-shirt for Waverly, Gavin's wife, Jen (I think), chimed in, "That was mean!" I said, "Yeah, I know!" Jay Lee of On The Run Texas was there and chuckled. (Jay helped Sarah out once again with the timing for the race and the finish line setup.) If I didn't have plans to go help out at Marathon Kids, I probably would have stopped into the store afterwards to see Christopher Bittinger and/or Vera Balic, who both work for Jay and Kevin Landry.
Sarah put me in charge of "course management" where I got to work with individuals from the Clear Lake Amateur Radio Club. These gentleman are HAM Radio operators who manned various parts of the course to make sure runners were safe and went in the right direction.
At about 7 a.m., Sarah took me out to the farthest point away from the start/finish area so that I could see the trail portion of the course (map). Not that I couldn't comprehend her verbal explanations, but this course was one that I needed to see to understand how it actually was to be run.
She dropped me off and after running the trail portion, I realized that I needed about 20 cones to mark off the portions where runners were supposed to go. I put three (3) cones towards the end of the trail part where runners very easily could have gone left and cut a significant portion off both one or two loops (Sarah said this actually happened in '04)!
Then I went back to part of the course where it left the park road and became "multi-terrain" as fellow Houston Running Blogger Jennifer Kim described it!
There had been a white chalk line that had been out there before (possibly for other runs or cross country meets), but it had faded. Therefore, I tried to place a cone far enough away from each other so that the runner could always see the next one (in case I couldn't get myself into position in time.) The only part of the course that was confusing was where runners had to run up behind a hilly knoll (much bigger than the "grassy one" in Dallas), over and down it and to the left.
However, I couldn't get to those back cones fast enough (and there were no Luis Armenteros' running even), which included running up the knoll, after leaving a part of the course to make sure that the runners knew where to go.
As I got up on the knoll, I found out the leaders missed the far two (2) cones that I had placed and turned right past an earlier cone and made a semi-side charge up the knoll. (Which I thought made it harder than I head-on charge like you would do in a hill workout!)
By the time I got to the top of the knoll to monitor runners, the lead runners were at the top of it and almost made a wrong turn directly down the opposite side of the knoll, but I told them to turn right, go through the middle of the knoll and back down it. (Crisis averted!)
I saw Jen on her first loop and cheered her on, but I don't think she heard me as she had her headset on -- or she wanted to block me out!
After the lead runners came through the second time (without having to go through the hill again), I actually was able to run with Jen for about half a mile.
As Sarah indicated in her post, everyone that I saw, cheered on, encouraged, et. al. on the course was having a wonderful time despite the first loop being run in truly hot and humid conditions (the second loop runners actually had a bit of a cool breeze)!
Sarah was a little disappointed that there weren't more numbers, but I agree with Rick Cook's comment on her blog that there was simply a glut of races on Saturday (and she had already made the choice not to go head-to-head on the 8th with the Bellaire Trolley Run).
Part of my plans for the Houston Running Bloggers in '07, even though I won't be president, is to initiate an "Up-And-Coming" race series that will include some events that could benefit from a bit more traffic. Yuri's Night 5K could be part of that as well as May's "Race of the Month", Trot for ToMagWa 5K in Tomball on May 6th of this year.
Because of not wanting to rush out from Sarah's race and a little bit of traffic getting all the way to the Northwest Mall area, I got to Dyer Stadium at 10 a.m. just as the Marathon Kids program was getting started. I saw super HARRA volunteers Noah Matthews and Theresa Drago (of the Striders) and Dr. Bob Hoekman in action and listened to some of the opening comments.
I didn't want to just get back in the truck and head home (although I could have) so I went to find someone to see if they needed anymore help. I ran in to a gentleman named Chris McClung and he said, "Why don't you go see that lady over there!" She was instructing the youngsters and their parents before they headed out on the track to finish their 26.2 miles for the period (to complete the program). So I joined a couple of young ladies as we helped make sure that they didn't run from the bleachers to this staging area and helped leading them in "Tigger bounces" (Cassie, you should have been there) and a couple of 10-second calf stretches on each leg.
The running portion of the program probably took no more than about 40 minutes for them to complete. I ended up staying until about noon working with volunteers from HARRA, CVS Pharmacy and Whole Foods Market to make sure that the entire football field was cleared of tables, bottles of water, water bottles, pretzels, chairs, pop-up tents and anything else.
It was a great experience and I had a great time!
The most interesting thing that I learned was that a local runner that I know of, Karen Nyberg, was an astronaut!
She was introduced during the early part of the program and she shared with the students that during mile 21 of the Houston Marathon this year that she remembered the Kick Off event from October and the sacrifice that the kids were making and that helped her get through a tough stretch of the competition.
I only knew of Karen as a talented runner who was one of the few HEB Texas 10K Challenge finishers last year. She was there in San Marcos at the Country Roads 10K and I remember seeing her finishing the 25K downtown last October as well.
Karen signed the kids' finisher's ribbons for them if they wanted!
I walked over and talked with Karen a little bit and I told her that I was impressed of her humility and that she never brought that up. She said that she was hoping to be assigned to a future Space Shuttle mission in the next two years. Her official Johnson Space Center bio is here.
I couldn't remember if she had registered for Boston this year (knowing that she posted a qualifying time in Houston in '06; 3:33:42); however, she pointed out that she ran Boston in '04 (3:47:33) after recording a qualifying time at Motorola in 2003 (at 33, 3:29:16).
Finally, I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss this! I'm continually flattered by those of you who take the time to frequent this blog. It reminds that I need to keep pushing doing the things that I'm doing -- as far as covering the sport.
Some of you come here to find ways to bust my ass. Others come here for what I hope to be good information. Some tire of the minutia. Others love it! So, the way I see it, there's an audience here for everyone!
I had a nice young lady (and I say young because she's 24 and I'm 39, although I don't feel it), Michelle Woloszyn, come up to me at the Yuri's Night 5K, introduce herself and told me that she enjoyed reading the blog and the things about Waverly, etc.
I asked her if she ran the course today (I didn't remember seeing her, but I could have missed someone) and she said that she was still recuperating from Houston as her knees took a bad beating during her 4:34:21 effort in January.
I don't see what I do as a big deal; however, I appreciate those that take the time to say "Hi!" It gives me the opportunity to count another runner as a friend -- plus it gives me the opportunity to publicly compliment others and to share some things about them with the rest of the world. Michelle indicated that she knew Sarah from NASA so I took the opportunity to do a little web search and here's a bit more information about her. (Michelle, as a Penn State fan, I'll forgive the University of Michigan flag!)
As you can see, I had a great time in the sport on Saturday! I hope you did too!
posted by WalkSports.com | 7:54 AM
2 Comments:
Jon,
Here is way your blog is read by many. There is a huge lack of information in our sport (about 1% is written in some publication), not just in Houston but in the US. Once a week we get a small article from the Chronicle and that's it. Most runner's will subscribe to as many running publications as possible but it's never enough. Your blog fills in the other 99% of information nobody gets. Thanks.
Yep, Michelle is a friend and was one of my trusty volunteers and was working the registration table. I saw her at mile 25 of the marathon in January and she was really hurting, but is doing well in her recovery. :)
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