Slides That Follow Your Voice: Chicago Accent Race Briefing

Slide 1: Volunteer briefing

0:17All right, everybody, grab a seat, grab a banana, we've got a lot to get through and the room is booked for the knitting club at eight. [laughs]

0:25I'm Marcus, I'm the race director, and tomorrow morning at seven thirty, forty-one thousand people are going to run through this city for twenty-six point two miles, and about twelve thousand of you in this room are going to make that possible. Welcome to the briefing. This is the only part of the weekend where I get to talk and nobody's moving. [chuckles]

Slide 2: 41,000 runners

0:47Weather first, because it's the question. Tomorrow's start is forecast at seven degrees Celsius, forty-five Fahrenheit for those of you who refuse to convert, dry, with a uh, a wind out of the northwest at about twenty kilometres an hour. That's good running weather and bad standing weather.

Slide 3: Weather: good for running, bad for standing

1:06If you're on an aid station, you'll be colder than the runners, for longer, so dress like you're going ice fishing and then take one layer off at nine. Not before nine. Every year somebody does and every year I have to find them a blanket, find them a blanket.

1:25The course. It's the same course as last year, with one change at mile nineteen, where the old route went over the bridge with the steel grilles. We've moved it one block north, to the bridge with the solid deck, because the grates ate twelve, no, fourteen shoes last year, and fourteen is a number I'm not prepared to defend.

Slide 4: The course: one change, at mile 19

1:47If you're a course marshal at mile nineteen, your entire job is to stand on the old corner and point north with great confidence. Don't explain. Point. No? Folks, that's the funniest thing I say all year. All right. I say this because two years ago a marshal at nineteen explained. He explained the history of the bridge. Runners stopped to listen. It was a good explanation, honestly, and we lost about four minutes on the men's leader, and he's at the finish line now, where talking's encouraged. Where was I. Aid stations.

Slide 5: 20 aid stations, about every 2 kilometres

2:26Aid stations. There are twenty, roughly every two kilometres. Water first, then electrolyte, then water again, always in that order, because a runner who grabs the wrong cup at mile twenty-two will remember your face.

2:43Cups go on the ground, not in the bins, and the sweep team will come through behind the last runner, and the sweep team is made up of people who've done this a very long time and have seen things. Say thank you to them.

2:58Medics, medical, all right, medical. Medical. There are eighteen medical tents and three hundred and twenty medical volunteers. If a runner sits down and doesn't get up in thirty seconds, you uh, radio. You don't diagnose. You don't say, you look fine. Nobody at mile twenty-four looks fine. You radio, and someone who went to school for this comes and makes the decision.

Slide 6: Medical: 18 tents, 320 volunteers

3:26Now, the part I actually care about. Somewhere around mile twenty-one, the crowd thins, the legs go, and about nine thousand people are going to be having the worst twenty minutes of their year.

Slide 7: Around mile 21: learn one name off a bib

3:42Your job there isn't logistics. Your job is to be the reason they keep going. Learn one name off a bib and say it. Say it wrong, it doesn't matter, they'll correct you and that's thirty more metres.

3:56Last year a woman named Priyanka ran her last five kilometres on the strength of a volunteer who called her Patricia the entire way. She came to find him at the finish. She hugged him for about a minute, and then she said, my name is Priyanka, and he said, I know, I was keeping you angry, and I've never been sure if that was true, and I decided not to ask. There was a point to that. The point is say the name.

4:25Final thing. There are forty-one thousand stories out there tomorrow and you're going to see the hard part of every one of them. Nobody will remember your name. Many of them will remember your cup. [sighs] That's the job, folks, and in my opinion it's the best one in the city.

Slide 8: Nobody will remember your name

4:46Radios are on the table by the door, the knitting club is in the hallway looking impatient, and I'll see you at five in the morning. Go home. Sleep. Wear the layers. I mean it about the layers. I'll be checking. I've got a clipboard.