Sore = Awesome

Q: What do you get when you combine a 5:30 wake up call, a bike ride, a semi-truck full of water and bananas, chilly rain, 36,000 people, free coffee, and a body full of sore muscles the next day?

A: A happy me.

I helped with post-race refreshments at the Race for the Cure on Sunday. It's project that I've enjoyed the last few years; it's pretty perfect for me because it combines my masochistic love for physical labor and my more benign love for do-gooding. Basically, volunteers get up really early (this year we didn't have to be there until 6:00--huzzah!) and unload a semi full of bananas and beverages donated by Pepsi/Aquafina, cart the truck contents however far to a small-ish tent area where we stage everything as well as we can and then guard it with our lives until people are done with the race. Then in a dizzying rush, we "distribute" the product, sticking a banana and bottled water into every hand we see as the tide of people surges to our little tent.

I bike there to avoid having to deal with an automobile in the midst of the race madness, and while you have to be there before the coffee stores open, thankfully there's the Caribou Coffee tent, giving out free cups of caffeinated bliss. Unloading the truck usually takes a little over two hours. Staging the stuff usually starts out as nicely organized stacking, and ends as, "Oh crap, more of that? I dunno, just stack it over there." Guarding stuff before the end of the race requires a heart of stone as you turn away people who give you every sob story in the book as to why they ought to get the free stuff NOW. Giving it away requires nerves of steel as you brace yourself against the thirsty horde. Eventually you're tempted to just start hurling bananas and bottles out into the crowd.

Each year brings its own fun twists and quirks. This year, for instance, the rain and soft ground made working with the hand trucks extra special, and the area that we had been given to distribute was teeeeny tiny. Also, the semi truck, parked on the paved walkway in Flagstaff right across the treeline from Frew St., was parked uphill, which added a lot more distance onto how far we had to haul the stuff, and also meant that as we were moving the pallets of stuff to the end of the truck for offloading, we had to pull them uphill. On the good side, we managed to score the use of two of the race's motorized utility carts, which was a great boon. Also, the beverage selection was much better--2/3 was water and the rest was flavored "vitamin" water. (Last year we were cursed with pallet upon pallet of Jazz, which had been Pepsi's latest marketing misadventure.)

There's one thing that never changes, and that is the average human being's willingness to take as much free stuff as they can possibly carry. Giant Eagle was giving away their canvas shopping bags, and people were walking around with these bags overflowing with scary pink bagels, yogurt, ice cream, fruit, McDonald's apple slice packets, as much of every handout that they could finagle. And yes, water, flavored water and bananas. In the end it was good, because as the rain moved in and the masses started scattering, we were faced with the prospect of having to put a bunch of leftover water back into the truck. We solved this by quite literally handing out the stuff by the case.

At any rate, as always I enjoyed doing it and am sore as hell today, which I really like. To me being muscle-sore is a great reminder that I was out and about doing something different and useful with my body, using it to its true best abilities.

And as with any cancer-related activity, I worked this year in honor of my grandmother Virginia Lloyd, a many-year survivor of breast cancer, and in memory of Dave Deerfield, who fought his one-year battle against cancer with courage, wisdom and humor.