Uh Oh... Who put that guy in charge? (plus bitch, bitch, bitch)

This Saturday the Steamboat Classic 4 mile and 15k race will be taking place right here in Peoria, Il!!!  Now normally I'd be running it, but after last weekends relay I decided I wasn't quite ready to race again just yet, so I decided to do the next best thing:  Volunteer!

This is my first time volunteering at a race so of course they put me into one of the most crucial jobs... traffic looker outer guy.  The roads the race is run on are initially closed but at a certain point the cross streets open up and that's where I come in.  I'll be standing at one of the corners watching for runners, watching for traffic, and making sure the two don't mix!   That's right... I'll be preemptively saving lives!

All kidding aside, I am excited that I'll still get to participate in the race because it's actually a pretty decent sized event (by Peoria, Illinois standards anyway).  The four miler is billed as one of the "fastest four mile road races in the world", in fact from 1986-2005 the world record for the four mile road race was held on the course (current course record is 17:24)... because of this the race has a decent sized purse and an elite athlete budget.  At the same time the race is still fairly small (2800+ finishers last year) which allows better than normal access to the elite runners (like you can stand right next to them at the starting line)... Last year I was even able to get Constantina Dita (the 2008 olympic gold medalist  in the women's marathon) to sign my race number!

All in all it should be a fun event and I plan on running down to the race from my house so I'll still get plenty of my own running in... but wait, there's more... for volunteering I get my very own volunteer t-shirt... and that's what it's really all about, right?

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Adding this to my post... seems like a lot of people have already read today's entry so maybe I'll be able to achieve blogger nirvana by bitching my ass off and venting my frustration while not subjecting any my readers to my pettiness... anyway... please feel free not to read this next part!

so today I'm out for a little 2 mile recovery run with my dogs... I'm going along minding my own business and up ahead I see this youngish avon sales-representative looking woman (this is not supposed to be a diss necessarily she was just dressed like a make-up saleswoman i.e. white blouse/name tag/wearing way too much makeup and hair care products) outside of her house with her two little dogs (not on leashes of course)... so as I approach her one little shit dog decides to come up and fuck with my 2 little shit dogs... ok, so not really a big deal, my dogs occasionally get free and go bark at the neighbors dog or someone walking by or something and I have to run out and grab them and apologize... but here's the part the bothers me... the woman basically does nothing to try to control her dog;  she says nothing to the dog, she doesn't come over and try to intervene... she just stands there.  I keep jogging along, hoping that the dog will go home after I pass, but the dog keeps following and meanwhile I'm doing all I can to stop my dog from attacking it's little bitch ass... and then the lady says to me in a snotty voice "if you keep jogging it's going to keep following you" (no "sorry about my dog" or anything like that)... so I stop and squat down and yell right in the dogs face "bad dog... go home".  That pretty much took care of it and I continued running, leaving the lady (pouting because I yelled at her "snookems") and her stupid shit dog behind...  the nerve of that lady "if you keep jogging (in her snotty nails on a chalkboard tone of voice)"... next time I'm going to actually stop, because my little 10 pound terrier gets very protective when she's on the leash and another dog comes up to her owner and she would not hesitate to go all Michael Vick on that little fur-ball... not that I condone violence against animals... just that you should control your fucking dog!!! and if you can't control your dog then don't let them out into the front yard without a leash!!!!  PHEWWW.... I feel much better now!  sorry bout that!