The Monument Avenue 10K by the numbers

The Monument Avenue 10K is one of the biggest dang races in the United States. With a race this massive — and massively popular — there are a lot of numbers involved in the preparation and execution of this thing. So, here are a couple facts and figs to keep in mind while you carboload for Saturday.

March 31, 2011; 12:00 PM • by Ross Catrow

The Monument Avenue 10K is one of the biggest dang races in the United States: easily top five among 10Ks and top 25 out of races in general. Around 40,000 participants will each run ten kilometers, totaling 400,000 kilometers — which is TEN TIMES THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE EARTH. That, citizens, is a lot of circumferences.

With a race this massive — and massively popular — there are a lot more numbers other than Earth circumferences involved in the preparation and execution of this thing. So, here are a couple facts and figs to keep in mind while you carboload for Saturday. Good luck runners!

Radioactive bananas

Did you know bananas are radioactive due to their deliciously high potassium content? Oh, it’s not enough to cause any problems UNLESS YOU ATE ALL 32,000 BANANAS provided by the 10K. If you could fit 16,000 pounds of bananas down your gullet you’d end up with the radiation dose of a mammogram.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now

Hey man, you drink all that water and it’s gotta go somewhere, right? Well fear not! The fine folks at the 10K have got your bladder’s back. There will be 372 porta-johns available for your relieving. That’s one porta-john for ever 110 participants and enough to put two on every block of The Fan.

Endless waves

There are 40 waves, and each wave holds between 750 and 1,500 runners. These babies crash upon the cobblestone shore of Monument Avenue every minute. No seriously, every minute from 8.30am until 10.20am a new wave starts. It takes them a mere 110 minutes to move 41,000 people through the starting line — oh just 110 people PER MINUTE.

The only other place I’ve seen efficiency like that is at the Wendy’s in the James Center.

Setup / tear down

We foolishly asked “how long does it take to set up Monroe Park the night before?” Turns out, by the time this article gets published they’ve been setting up for AN ENTIRE DAY. They started setting up Wednesday at 9am and will continue off and on until Friday at 11pm. Then they’ll put the “finishing touches” on from 4 – 7am. No bigs.

Hamburger helper

It takes a lot of manpower to execute such crazybig event, and it wouldn’t happen without the volunteers. 2085 wonderful volunteers to be exact. Almost one volunteer for every twenty racers to be less exact. This is almost six times the number of people who live in the town my mom grew up in!

Not included in this number are the 80 or so water stop volunteers. So let’s call it 2165. Which leads me to…

H2WHOA

4,777 gallons of liquid (2,985 water; 1,792 PowerAde) quench the thirst of the runners and wash away their sweat, blood, and tears. That’s, like, 51,000 Diet Cokes, man. That’s 340,000 cups worth of liquid. Whoa.

RVA, RVA

41,000 people is a lot of people. 41,000 is actually 1/5th of Richmond proper’s total population. Which could explain why it was nearly impossible to find a photographer for this year’s race; every dang person I know is running this thing. Seriously, 91% of runners are from Richmond!