Will work for swag: tales from behind the scenes of a race

Two years ago I took a leap of faith and signed on with ZOOMA Women’s Race Series. Originally I was managing the ambassador program, but Sarah invited me to travel to the Texas race in March of 2018. It’s been a wild and crazy ride since then, but somehow earlier this month, I took the lead in producing our second Texas race of the year.

I know! I don’t quite know how I got here, but I’m couldn’t be happier. As Sarah said to me one night at midnight as we unpacked boxes, “This is so much fun.” So true. I have never had so much fun while working so hard in my life. I thought I’d share some of the crazy, unusual, and “oh shit” moments of this past race season.

Random statistics

Things I stuffed in my running bra: my phone, my glasses, a multitool, an entire roll of trash bags

Latest night: 1:00 am

Earliest wakeup: 1:30am (thank goodness these were not at the same race)

Most number of steps walked: 25,434 (Lake Lawn Resort in Wisconsin is very spread out and I got lost in the hallways. More than once.)

Least number of steps walked: 7,265 (apparently when you manage packet pickup out of a garage you don’t move much)

Number of craft beers drunk: very very few. I think I managed one or two at each race.

Number of ZOOMA tops I have: enough to not do laundry for a very long time.

I didn’t sign up for this

AKA things I never thought I’d have to do…

Crate packing: we move things from race to race in a big crate. There are certain things that MUST fit and they have to go in a certain way. Let’s just say that all those hours of avoiding my master’s thesis by playing Tetris totally paid off.

Goose poop kicking: yes, we are a full service company. We’ll even go out on the course and kick goose poop off the sidewalk.

Just call me Jeeves: Who knew that driving 15 passenger vans would be in my job description? (Spoiler – not my strongest skill.)

“OH Shit” Moments

Math is not my strong point: I totally ordered half the number of muffins we needed for one race. (Thankfully we were able to get the other half made in time for the race.)

Where’s my phone?: I work in Skirt Sports – every single day. But one day I wore an old pair of tights with no pockets. I spent the entire day misplacing my phone. I did not make the same mistake the next day (I wore a skirt over my tights.)

Where’d you put the medals?: Tropical Storm Nestor added some fun to our Florida race. Along with MANY other crazy things, we accidentally buried all the medals in the very back of the van. That’s ok – we’ll just climb over boxes until we get to them…

Honey, I shrunk the kids!: OK, maybe just a wine glass or two…

2019 was a blast! I loved every minute of the hard work we did. Watching runners make PRs, kids hand out medals, and new friendships being made on the course made it all worth while. See you all at the races in 2020!