The unprecedented size of the Olympic Marathon Trials field has posed some challenges for race organizers at the Atlanta Track Club (ATC).
Chief among them? Getting runners their bottles.
At major marathons, elite athletes get their own drinks that they’ve prepared for themselves, usually every 5 kilometers, and each runner likes a different type of drink. (Some like Gatorade. Some like Maurten. Some mix it strong. Others prefer a weaker concentration.) Their bottle formulations are based on years of experimenting in training and other races.
But at a major marathon like New York City or Boston, this service is available only to the invited field, roughly 80 athletes or so, maybe 40 men and 40 women.
Not so at the Trials, where personal bottle service is available to any qualified athlete who wanted it. And getting the right bottle into the right hands, six times on the course, has required months of planning.
Caryn Lamphier, the hydration director for the Trials, and Holly Ortlund, the course director, spoke to Runner’s World about how it’s going to work:
523 athletes have opted into the personal hydration program. Although the exact number of runners who will start the race on February 29 in Atlanta is still a moving target—athletes might withdraw with injury or illness up until race day—the ones who are running had to tell the ATC organizers a few weeks ago whether they were opting into the personal bottle service.
Each runner gets six bottles on the course, so race organizers have to distribute 3,138 bottles. These will be set out every 4 miles, starting at mile 2. Here’s where the looped course comes in handy: Three bottles will go to a hydration station for miles 2, 10, and 18, and the other three will go to the station for miles 6, 14, 22. “It’s not six different stops,” Lamphier said. “It is two different hydration stations that they’ll pass three times each.”
Great, but how do those 523 athletes find their bottles? It gets complicated:
Organizers are putting out 23 tables for men and 37 tables for women, a total of 60 tables at each location. Men’s come first on the course and they’ll have blue tablecloths. After a short gap, the women’s tables start, and they’ll have red tablecloths. All together, the tables line the road for about a third of a mile. The tables will be on the runners’ right. (They’re supposed to discard empty bottles to their left, so course volunteers can come in and scoop them away.)
Each runner will be assigned a table number, and on that table, a position number. If all goes well, they should expect to find their bottles there.
The first 15 tables of each gender are going to have six bottles per table. Those will have the top 90 athletes by qualifying time. The remaining runners will be going to table 16 through 23 for the men and 16 through 37 for the women. And they’ll be at a bottle density of up to 12 bottles per table.
Not all the top seeds will have their bottles on the same table. They’ll spread them out among the first 15 tables for each gender.
Runners are allowed to decorate their bottles, putting their own personal stamp on them, which makes them easier to spot on a table. And they can attach gels or hats, as Galen Rupp did at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
Getting those bottles to the tables is up to the organizers, and requires smooth labeling at bottle pickup on Friday afternoon. The organizers have designed a six-pack bottle carrier for each athlete—almost like a wine carrier. But as long as bottle pickup goes smoothly, organizers aren’t too worried about distribution.
Atlanta Track Club organizers have created a six-pack bottle carrier for each athlete.
“The volunteers will arrive nice and early get their tables measured and set up correctly,” Lamphier said. “Then their crew chiefs tell them to prepare for lap 1. At which point the volunteers will open up the box [packed on Friday night] for the personal hydration stations. They’ll pull out the lap 1 bottles. And the bottles will be checked to make sure they’re in right position.”
When a sweep vehicle goes through, volunteers will remove any remaining bottles and prepare for second lap. And repeat for the third lap.
Every 2 miles, neutral fluids are on the course—water and Powerade, which are available to the entire field. Energy gels will also be available and sponges, too. “We don’t recommend people drink from the sponges or suck on them,” Lamphier said. “We’ve tried it ourselves, and they don’t taste good. But they’re 100 percent natural, plant based. There’s nothing in them, no soap. But if it’s a really hot day, you want to drink from the water bottle, not the sponge.”
For the Trials, the Atlanta Track Club has recruited 1,492 volunteers, and 530 of them are in the hydration program. “That’s for both the personal hydration stations we have and also the general hydration stations we have,” Lamphier said.
Say this for the Atlanta Trials: None of the runners should go thirsty.
Sarah Lorge Butler
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
