I originally thought I might run this race, but my knees and ankles said no. Then I thought this might be a great opertunity to get the 8 hours of volunteer work that I need for the Grindstone 100 race in Oct.
I called Dennis Hambrick,the promoter and asked him if he needed any help. He said he deperatly needed someone to run an aid station. Anybody that has ever run an ultra knows that getting up early on race morning is just part of the experience, but it was ruff getting up at 3:45 just to go volunteer. I got to the start 1/2 hour before the race and Dennis informed me that he needed me to run the last AS. I guess that is what you get for being the new guy. Since the last AS is the last one to close, who ever works it gets to be out there the longest, but that was ok with me. I needed to get 8 hours in anyway. He said it would probably be around 4 hours before the front runners would be there.
Since I had a little time to kill I went to McDonalds to get some brunch and to Wal-Mart to get a magizine and some munchies. I got to my AS and settled in. About 9:30 I started setting up. Since I had never set up an AS before (I have grazed at a few before) I tryed to set it up so that traffic would flow smoothly through the station.
At about 10:30 the first runner came through. It was a half hour brfore the next one, then they just trickled in after that. Everything really went smoothly. Everybody was so nice.
To sum it up. I had a blast. It was a great experience, seeing an ultra race from the outside. Dennis runs a first class race.
