Funny...from the TIR website....
Well, it's been an excellent week for my race director friends, Jay and Joy. First, they ordered a bunch of 28 inch cones that were dropped off in huge stacks on their driveway. They're heavy, but I can lift 'em. Anyway, it looked like they were going to try to take over the neighborhood with their massive stockpile of large orange cones that sat in front of their garage.
Well, it just so happened that the neighbor kids had a get together that very evening, and the temptation was just too great. In the middle of the night, they decided to block off the main roads of the subdivision with the plentiful new cones they had access to. Hey, if I were to think it's slightly funny (not that I do, Joy, because it most certainly was thievery), that wouldn't automatically make me a bad person.
Joy quickly recognized early the next morning that many of the cones were gone, and Jay was so very happy to be awakened with such good news because he is such a chipper morning riser. The good thing is that over the course of the morning, they were able to locate all of their cones. The less-than-great thing is that neighbors personally let Jay and Joy know that they were unhappy because they "could not find a way to their home with the roads being blocked". Awesome. A dual-victim prank… Again, not that I advocate such behavior. 
Subsequently, Jay and Joy expect to receive a nasty-gram from the neighborhood homeowner's association soon, but they say they're ready for the real cone wars to begin (after the relay is over, of course).
Then, they received some… actually, a lot… of medal ribbons, and somehow the people doing the ribbons did not put the correct mileage on it (putting 207 instead of 203). I said to Jay a long time ago, "Hey chief, if they're not from Texas, do you think you can really trust them?" Evidently, my point was lost on him. Perhaps he found it confusing since I am not from Texas and can be trusted like none other. Anyway, the promotional product business conceded the error was all theirs, but they unfortunately do not think they can send new corrected ones out in time as the country (yet another place that's not Texas) they get their fabric from is in the midst of celebrating the New Year. I don't know, but the way a calendar works does not seem overly complex to me, but hey, I'm just an NFL quarterback… one of the best ever. Then again, perhaps those peoples just know how to seriously party. So, now Jay and Joy are considering just leaving it at 207 miles, using a black Sharpie pen to transform the 7s into a slightly tall 4s or somewhat squared-off 3s, or giving each team a Sharpie with which to fix it. You runners like Jay and Joy are such odd birds. I say, just run a few wind-sprints before and afterwards to make it 207. What's a few more miles… I mean, to you guys.
My point is that being a race director is little bit like being an NFL quarterback. You don't need rock hard abs, a rocket arm, or super-sharp intellect. You neither get the rabid fans nor the big bucks (and you shouldn't… notice I said "a little bit like"... like Jay and Joy, for example). But, the job is not always for the faint of heart. Do you have it in you?
(All kidding aside, the stories above are 100% true! If you know us, you know that the incorrect mileage on the medal ribbon just about kills us. If you find it particularly irksome too, please provide us with your name and mailing address by the end of March, and we'll send you a corrected ribbon as soon as we can along with our apologies for the mental distress caused. We understand... The course is 203.67 miles, NOT 207 miles.)
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