Flying Pig Marathon 2009: Sunday May 3, 2009

Sunday May 3, 2009

This is the last day of the Flying Pig Marathon. Today we had to get up at 5am and be down at the finish line at 6am. It wasn’t easy getting up when the sun wasn’t even out yet, and the rain was misty and slightly chilly weather. Even after working two hard and long days before today. this was the event that made all the previous hard work make sense. We all met up at the Mount again and car pooled down to the Marathon. We didn’t know what to expect on the ride down due to already having the race going on by this time. We where worried about finding parking. When we got down to Newport we just got there in time because there was already some runners starting to running down two streets over from where we parked. We walked over to bridge to Cincinnati and the finish line where we would be working as “Info pigs”. Our duty today was to assist all runners and families where they could go if they where lost or didn’t know where something was.
Many of the main questions that I got asked was “where do I go to pick up my claim and belongings off the shuttle buses?” We also had to make sure that all runners had a clear path to get out of the marathon and find their families in an orderly manner. There were thousands of runners coming out the exit of the marathon and one of my jobs was to make sure they did this in a safe order. There was a list of rules that we where given and the main rule that they wanted to too make sure was followed and no re-entry of the gates for runners or even non runners. A lot of family member’s wanted to go into the gates where the runners would be coming out to congratulate them right away. There isn’t enough room or space for all runners and family members to be inside the gates. I had one man step right in front of me and had to ask him to please step behind me. At this time when I said this he wasn’t very happy with me and got an attitude with me. I tried to be calm with him because I was representing the Flying Pig Marathon. After a few minutes of listening to this man complain wanting to move where the barricades were set up, another worker came over and helped me out. I found this hard but also a learning experience about what all goes on about keeping participants and their families in order.