Twas the night before Knee Knacker…
With all of 15 hours to go before KKNSTR 2011 start, I wanted to take a minute to share my sincere thanks to all of the volunteers who work to make this run possible, to our great community sponsors, and to all of our runners who take on this adventure. It is pretty spectacular to be involved in a run where not only are there more volunteers than runners, not only do people come back to volunteer year after year, but we actually have to turn volunteers away! Thank you for this.
At this point in particular, I want to thank our committee who puts in countless hours, days and weeks to pull everything together:
- Enzo – not only did Enzo found this run 23 years ago, he continues to be involved with the work in the background and is the “Godfather” (I say this in the most flattering way possible) – an integral thread in our North Shore running community;
- Rod – who has done a stellar job of working with all of our sponsors, ensuring supplies & prizing and endless details are in place;
- Bev – who has years of experience as a part of our Banquet crew, and stepped in this year to lead the ‘whole party’;
- Julie – who has taken on her aid station co-ordinator role and just run with it – there are new items on the menu, the first aid kits are all up to date, and she organized ‘grand central station’ for distributing all of the supplies (additionally, the cookie you get in your drop bag was made by Julie herself);
- Dennis – who has jumped in anywhere we’ve needed him to, has put together the runner and volunteer surveys, ensured logistics and planning are taken care of, and sent our press releases out;
- Glenn – who has managed the marshals, pre-sweeps, course marking and of course the almost famous training runs this year, and who on race day will be with North Shore Search and Rescue addressing any course issues;
- Tim – from North Shore Search and Rescue who has pulled out all the stops to ensure we all get safely from the start to the finish (and whose team will be up at 5am hauling supplies to the Black Mountain aid station with their rescue sleds!);
- Andrew – who has taken on the volunteer co-ordination role with the most comprehensive care and attention to (the seemingly endless!) details, ensuring all 250 people have what they need to help us all through our day;
- Jeff – whose official role is the graphics, shirts, poster, and all important beer for the banquet, but whose ‘real’ role is to keep me sane.
Additionally, I’d like to thank Patricia who has done a stellar job of leading the training runs and helping wherever else we need it and Greg who will be tracking our runners on race day, working closely with NSSR and each of the checkpoint aid stations.
THANK YOU ALL!
Tonight at our race briefing at North Shore Athletics, we’ll cover all of the latest course updates and run through the logistics of the next 24 hours. This will be the last web post until after the race when we have the results, however I encourage you and your friends/family to follow our Twitter feed (on the site if you don’t use Twitter), and share your thoughts on our Facebook group.
I look forward to seeing everyone… remember, pain is inevitable, suffering optional!
Happy Trails,
Kelsy.
