Inside Marathon Week

by Jon Lugbill

Kids Run RVA-official charity of the Anthem Richmond Marathon

I had the opportunity this week to visit one of the running clubs we support through our Kids Run RVA program at Marguerite Christian Elementary School in Chesterfield County. This running club meets on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and Jeff Seho with Fit4Kids organizes the program as part of his work to promote physical activity at the school. He asked our Title I school outreach coordinator Jacki Quinlan for help setting up the program at the beginning of the year.

The morning I went to visit, I was surprised by how moved I was by the experience.  Driving down to the school, I passed the largest trailer park in the Richmond area. These kids come from one of the more challenged areas in the region. As they arrived at the gym, 30 minutes before school was to start, they started walking around to warm up. Once this diverse group of kids was assembled, we went outside and ran around a field with cones in the four corners—five laps equaled a mile.

I spotted one little girl who just kept running.  I ran up beside her and learned this fourth grader was named Lydia and that she liked to run because she said it made her feel good. I kept running with her and she was maintaining a very even pace. I asked her how far she wanted to go and she said her goal was to run 2 miles in the 20 minutes allotted. She explained how the week before she was ¼ mile short of reaching two miles. It was almost 20 minutes into the run, and she was just finishing her 9th lap, keeping track by taking a popsicle stick at the end of each one. She needed to do one more. Jeff was asking the kids to wrap it up and start picking up the cones. Lydia asked if she could please do one more lap, and he of course said yes.  She raced around that last lap and sprinted to finish her 2 miles. I gave her a fist bump and congratulated her. She smiled and thanked me for helping to pace her through her longest run ever. She was so proud of herself. I just melted.

If you would like to volunteer at Marguerite Christian, or any of the 30 other running clubs in the region that are part of Kids Run RVA, please contact Jacki Quinlan at [email protected]. You can also contact her if you would like to start a running club at a school that you are associated with.

Logistics Resembles Art

The Sports Backers office goes a little wacky the week of the Anthem Richmond Marathon. I asked John Raigins, our logistics coordinator, how does this all work so that everything is delivered and set up by the right people in the right place? He said he didn’t really know how it all worked because there are so many staff and volunteers working on all of the moving parts that it is nearly impossible to keep it all straight.

John tends to downplay his coordination skills, but he has a Masters Degree in Sports Management, and more importantly he has the equivalent of a doctorate in knowing how to get things done.

He said he was coordinating ten box trucks and five semi-trailers full of event production equipment and supplies. He’s coordinating five different forklifts in operation this week, moving a multitude of supplies including 380,000 cups and 800 boxes of blankets, not to mention the 20,000 shirts and 20,000 medals for our participants. Our 7,500 square foot warehouse has been busy for the past two months with shipments coming in and supplies being loaded for the ultimate delivery to the runners.

I asked him what the hardest task was this week and he instantly said putting up and taking down the barricade. More than a mile of metal barricade is installed at the start and finish areas to keep the runners safe. Fortunately, the Varina wrestling team, led by their coach Curtis Johnson, has volunteered for years to set up and take down this barricade. (Sports Backers donates to the wrestling team to help them with their expenses to prepare for the season.) The logistics of setting up barricade with big trucks, forklifts and 40 high school kids is pretty challenging, but they now have this strongman form of ballet down to an art.

Of course, all that really matters this week with all of these logistics and 2,000 volunteers, is to make sure our runners finish their race and receive a congratulations for a job well done. I think everyone involved in the race feels a sense of pride when each of our runners celebrates as they cross the finish line (that we of course set up.)