I decided to get away from SWL and do my presentation on what I did for Make a Difference day...

1. ITP 251 Week 4 Make a Difference Day 10/25/09 John Staab jgs28@email.vccs.edu

2. Make a Difference Day For “Make a Difference Day” I volunteered to work the 34th Marine Corps Marathon. The marathon lasts a few hours but the preparation and pre-marathon activities take much longer. Planning takes the better part of a year Setup and teardown run about two weeks Apre-marathon exposition runs for two days, leading up to the event

3. Make a Difference Day I helped with the setup, operation, and teardown of the “Health and Fitness Expo” The Expo is where runners go to pick up their race packets and see products offered by race sponsors and other vendors Race packets include the runners bib and official Marine Corps Marathon shirt

4. Health and Fitness Expo Setup - 21-22 October 2009 Vendors arriving at expo hall, 8:00am on the 21st

5. Health and Fitness Expo Operation - 23-24October 2009 90,000+ people passed through the Expo in 2 days

6. Health and Fitness Expo Tear Down – 10:00pm 24October 2009 What took 2 days to setup, takes 4 hrs to clear out

7. Marathon DayOctober 25, 2009 Once the Expo wrapped up, we rushed back to the hotel for a quick nap, then it is off to the Pentagon parking lot by 4am to begin preparing to help runners prior to the race. The race starts promptly at 8am so there is a very small window of time to fix last minute problems runners have, such as lost bibs or where they can find the charity they might be running with.

8. Start Line With close to 30,000 runners, the queue stretched 1600 ft from start line to last runner

9. Course Map

10. Marathon Finish The top runners will complete the 26.2 mile race in a little over two hours

11. After The Top Finishers Miles, the Marathon Mascot, helps encourage runners to push to the end… Careful if you come to watch, you just might get motivated to try to run yourself next year…