Marathon Weekend

Troy and I were up Sunday a.m. at 5:00 to have breakfast and be at the Parish Center at 6 for our part of the Marine Corps Marathon. We (the Scout troop) help the marines set up and hand out water and Powerade. It's an amazing thing to witness. The first to go by are the wheelchair racers-- no legs (or non-working ones), pedaling their special rigs with their arms. Also saw a blind runner with his sighted running partner. They were lightly tethered, giving them both the chance to use their arms as they ran and to keep them close to each other if/when they were overtaken by the herd. And it is very like a herd. The faster runners go by, barely slowing to grab at the paper cups of water or powerade we were offering, then the mad rush of the other 22,000 going by. I guess it was about 8:30 that we saw the wheelchair racers go by, then by 9:15 it's all over except for a few stragglers. Thousands and thousands of paper cups smashed in the street (Lee Hwy. at Adams St., in our case). Then the Scouts and the Marines get busy and 15 minutes later you'd never know we'd been there. The trash trucks lumber by picking up the bags of trash, the street sweepers do their thing, and then we're done. A whole bag of clothing was collected for donation-- shirts and jackets shed by the runners as they got warmed up. Our station was at mile 2, so there was more there than there would be down the road. It was cold, too. I didn't dress in enough layers. Took me hours to get fully warm again. Troy spent the rest of the day variously in front of the tv under a blanket or in front of the computer with his aviator cap on.