Think it's easy being a water boy?

Well before dawn last Saturday I parked my car on Eighth Street just off Constitution Avenue, double-checked the meter hours, tightened my scarf, pulled down my cap, and reported for work at Fluid Stop 3/17 at the National Marathon. In the frigid darkness (whose idea was this, anyway?) long rows of six-foot tables were taking shape on both sides of the Avenue, in front of the National Archives, and a TV crew was setting up nearby.

It turned out to be a fascinating day. Considering the size and scope of our station (at miles 3 and 17) and the intensity of the set-up process, I first thought this had to be overkill. Then it occurred to me that these folks had done this before, and knew better just what was ahead.

What was ahead was overwhelming. The first runners at about 7:15…a trickle…then the deluge. A dense mass of people swept by us for 40 continuous minutes, then thinned out for a while, then ended and gave us a 20-minute pause before the marathoners came by the second time.

People have no idea how exhausting it can be handing cups of water to runners. You think, holding two little paper cups at arm’s length, how hard can it be? Try it for a couple of hours  some time, without pause, in the freezing cold.

Sometimes people come at you with such intensity you want to drop your cups and flee. Sometimes they jostle and trip each other, or flail for the cup and miss. Some want you to jog alongside them and pass them the cup like a relay baton. Others run right for you, then at the last second skip you and grab their water from the next guy, leaving you ready to shout after them “Yo! What am I, chopped liver?”

The guy that won, Michael Wardian, does more than a dozen of these a year, and he’s off to South Africa in a month for a 56K, and then an 89K. And Saturday morning, as he cruised by Mile 17, he didn’t even glance at the rows of eager water bearers on either side. Didn’t feel our pain. Didn’t acknowledge our shivers. Just ran by.

I tell ya, it’s a jungle out there.

At the opposite extreme, the final runner passed Mile 17 just before 11 o’clock, after nearly four hours on the course and with nine miles to go, trailed by a DC police cruiser, an ambulance, and a row of trash trucks. He smiled, waved, took a cup of water and kept going.