Waves and Corrals

It took me some time to get how the waves and corrals worked.

Here is how I simplified it.

There are 45,000 people running. They are divided into 3 waves so that only 15,000 start at a time. Each wave is divided into sections - the sections have colors - green, blue and orange. So, each section has 5,000 people.

The first wave of runners (wheeled people start earlier) started at 9:40, the second wave at 10:10 and my wave at 10:40. That gave 30 minutes for each group of 15,000 to move along the route so that we were spread out and the streets could manage the flow.

On the bridge, the 3 sections in each wave start at the same time. They do not start at the same place.

Green - they start on the bottom of the bridge. I think they use just one direction of the lower level of the bridge, leaving the other direction open for emergency vehicles. They go through streets that blue and orange do not go through for the first few miles.

Blue - they start on the right side of the bridge and stay on the right side of the street for the first 8 miles.

Orange - we start on the left side of the bridge and stay on the left side of the street until we all merge at mile 8.

The clock we see throughout the race is the time since wave 1 started, so wave 3 just had to subtract an hour to get their time, while wave 2 had to subtract 30 minutes.

The green people are the ones who can get peed on. It seems that some runners do not like to deal with the portajohn lines, so they wait for the race to start, scoot over to the side of the bridge, whip it out and pee over the side. If you are green and want to look up into the sky while running, you could get peed on. Some say you can see the various stream of urine of you look for it. Gross.