Sweating profusely, the bedraggled man drags himself up one more hill. The midday sun's merciless eye follows him up, just as it's been following him for miles.His legs feel as if weighted down with irons. His throat is so dry from the heat as he gasps for breath that his tongue is like a month-old sponge. His sides ache. He is in pain, and he is so thirsty.
The hill crests. Below him, shimmering in the heat and his own ringing head, is the most beautiful sight he thinks he has ever laid eyes on.
It is a water station, and it is glorious.
For those competing in a distance running event, there is no sweeter sight on the road. There may not be fig trees, there may not be a shimmering pool, but it is no less an oasis.
"It's funny, because when people are running through, they have totally blank faces," Claire Leyden said. "And then you say ‘water' and their face just lights up."
Leyden, a 15-year-old from Croton-on-Hudson, got to see that joy over and over again last Sunday. She volunteered to hand out liquid refreshment at a water station at the Westchester Toughman Half Triathlon. By the time runners passed her roadside table, they had already finished the swimming and biking sections of the race.
For a few hours, she was one of the most beloved people in northern Westchester.
"You have all these people grabbing things from you," she said. "It's crazy, especially when there's like seven people at the same time. Sometimes they won't even finish it. They'll just dump it on their heads. There's water everywhere. I got soaked a couple times."
She learned the hard way that cups, which she dipped into an orange cooler full of cold water, can be filled only so far. The hand of a moving runner is only so steady.
Her friend Rebecca Anapol of Cortlandt Manor isn't sympathetic. Anapol was working a water station on the bike course. If anyone thinks the cup transfer from station to runner is scary, try handing one to a moving cyclist."When the bikers were taking the water, the really intense ones, they grab the water and they didn't even slow down. They didn't even stop at all," she said. "They just literally pluck it right out of your hands because they were into it. They were in it to win it."
She had to hold the water bottles from the top and stick out her arm so that speeding cyclists could snatch them on the move. Her station offered Gatorade
, too. When one cyclist found out about the Gatorade, he took the water bottle she had given him and absentmindedly tossed it back. Guess who it hit.
Despite giving away drinks to 500 people, most of whom took their services on the way out and on the way back of the looped track, neither of their stations ran out. Nor did any of the other stations.
Mitch Vanderveer acted as a drink shuttle. Volunteer coordinator Eve Hartman recruited the Croton resident and his pickup truck to drive around the course, making sure everyone was stocked. He would find out what one station was running low on, drive to another station and pick it up, and bring it back to the first station.
"So I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, you know what I mean?" he said.
The closest call was one station that came within a single bottle of running out of water.
When the race was all over, the volunteers
, who were both wet and hot, had to pick up all the crumpled cups and half-empty bottles left behind. Nightmares where cyclists come at them at 100 mph promised to haunt their sleep.
"But after all of it," Leyden said, "there was a lot of people that would come after they were finished and be like, ‘Thank you for volunteering; thank you for being here.' That just felt good, because I felt like I helped them do something that I would never, ever be able to do in my life."
