The Smell of Aspercreme in the Air

“What the hell am I doing?”

Was my waking thought at 2:45am on Sunday morning as I climbed out of bed and prepared myself for the long day ahead. While ridding to Staten Island on a charter bus with other half-awake volunteers, I came to terms with the fact that I had, in fact, CHOSEN to get up at an insane hour on a Sunday and decided to make the best of my day. Some 85,000 athletes applied to run in the 2005 New York City Marathon with around 35,000 ultimately accepted to participate. Criteria for acceptance to the marathon was just one of many questions that floated through my mind as I unloaded water palates from a Poland Springs truck at 5:00am. Did they have a quota on how many freckle-faced-red-headed men could participate. Did they need a certain amount of Catholics? Were people turned down because they were from Florida? My mind swarmed as I eyed the field of runners, creating long lists in my head of the things that could separate these athletes from the 50,000 rejected aspiring marathoners.

While drafting marathon rejection letters in my head, I thought also about the marathon event planners and what a great job they had done organizing the event. I found it funny, however, that there were 5 volunteers to unload water at 5:00am but 20 to hand it out at 7:00am. By 8:00am, as the pain in my puny biceps began to fade (only to come back with a vengeance the next morning), I was able to take a break from handing out water to watch as a stream of buses crossed the bridge over to the island, bringing with them thousands upon thousands of runners.

In the staging are there was 35,000 runners and with them came 35,000 different preparation routines. Powerbar vs. Cliff bard, Gatorade vs. Powerade, Nike vs New Balance, … I could smell the focus in the air along with aspercreme, icy hot and other rubs meant to preempt the inevitable pain that was to come with subjecting their body to pavement pounds for twenty-six point two miles. All in all, it was a pretty cool sight, and pretty neat to be a part of such a large event. One ritual they all had in common was shedding at least one item of clothing and leaving it at the start once the race began. Talk about a field day for the Salvation Army! But really, the clothes do get donated and it was pretty awesome to see all these abandoned garments as we loaded the bus to return back to Manhattan.

Because of our valiant efforts early in the morning, all volunteers from the first shift received passes to the Sponsor Bleachers located 90 yards from the finish. Pretty fun to watch these insane individuals as they hit the final stretch in Central Park.

I must say that the downside of handing out water all morning, is that it was readily available (and because, of course, I wanted to market the goods that I was distributing) I drank LOTS and LOTS of water. I drank so much water, it was almost disastrous. You know when you eat too much of something, even if it is yummy, you end up not ever being able to eat it again (or at least not without taking a serious break from it)? Well, while bagels and red licorice were once on my list of delicious, yet undesirable foods, water came dangerously close to joining my current list of great, yet burnt out items, which now includes pizza, tuna fish and microwave chili (the staples of a cheap NYC diet).

Aside from my dangerous near overdoes of Poland Springs water, I had a pretty fun morning watching runners prepare for the race. While I’m not really in to participating in this type of masochistic behavior (my attempt at running cross-country in high school was punishment enough) I enjoyed the beautiful Fall day and all of the excitement, and aspercreme in the air.