As the last of the first grouping of runners passed my spot, I had a bit of time to say hello to some of the volunteers and photograph the first aid station. Pretty tough to run any major event of this magnitude without the support of the citizens along the route and the legion of volunteers doing all of the many, many required tasks to keep things running smoothly.
 
I decided that I didn’t have a need for anything that the First Aid Station folks were offering so continued my travels upstream to the refreshment area.
I arrived at that point just as the first of the female contestants was passing by the water station. A second female contestant was not far behind.
Although there is lots of excitement at the water stations as the runners pass by and grab their cup of water, it is one of the more difficult areas to photograph since volunteers and their arms and the cups of water and aqua blue t-shirts continue to get between the camera and the runner :-). Therefore, after a bit of time near the water station, I continued on my way.
At first, runners came one or two at a time but that began to change as more and more runners began to arrive in larger groupings.
 
 
No pics of the band?
Thought you might have at least one.
Great pics.
– Rob (Hank’s Hangover)
Rob:
Checked after sending you the e-mail. Hangovers made it to page 6 :-). I think that a parting shot before I was heading back to the car will be on page 8 or 9 once those pages become publicly visible. Still editing and adding. Enjoyed your music.
Ron
Thank you for taking these great pictures of the Ottawa Marathon. You did a good job capturing the effort being made by the runners.
I take my camera along when I do these races, but I am trying to limit most of my picture-taking to “before” and “after” the race, since stopping during a long run can really break your rhythm. The pictures, most with captions, of running in Ottawa and from various races are on my Flickr website.
Love your fountain relief shots.