SLC Marathon

I don't think I ever posted the letter I wrote to the local news editor about passing out water at the SLC Marathon. It sounds really negative, but I don't feel like fixing it up:

This past Saturday, I and several others arrived at the Salt Lake City marathon’s 2nd mile at 5:15 AM and spent the next two hours setting up in the cold.

We had an enjoyable time, mostly, except for the presence of a man who showed up after everything was set up, had his wife take photos of him holding water, bragged about his company donating the water, sat in his warm car until the runners arrived, and left after asking who would clean up. Park City ICEWATER Company: next year, don’t donate. Runners did not want 16 ounces of “water the way nature intended” at mile 2. They also didn’t appreciate the hard-to-open lids. We cleaned up hundreds of unopened packages. All the opened ones had more than half the water left and their lids were strewn across Foothill Boulevard for a block. Next year’s water may not be from “Pure Glacier Ice,” but it will be in cups without lids, holding small enough amounts of water for the runners. I don’t think nature intended for drinking water to go wasted in plastic packaging thrown in the gutters, not to be cleaned up by the generous hearts who donated it.