Who has ran a marathon?! What about a Half Marathon?! For the past few years every Memorial Day weekend I have been documenting Mountains 2 Beach Marathon & Half. Mountains 2 Beach Marathon is one of the top running events to qualify for Boston Marathon. People from all over the world come to run the beautiful, fast, and mostly down hill marathon from Ojai to Ventura! I photograph everything from expo setup to race day! Documenting Mountains 2 Beach Marathon as a whole gives me the freedom photograph just about anything I want to. Well… there are some exceptions… Before the big weekend I have meetings with the race directors about what they need photographed. Once I have their list, I make my shot list!
Their main needs from me this year was to photograph the overall of race weekend with an emphasis on where items are placed. That includes everything from signs, tents, booths, beer garden and lots of other details. Saturday is packet pickup/expo and Sunday is race day finish line/expo. So, I photography where everything and what does it look like before and while the runners are their. Last year I went to the Marathon start line to document it for the race directors but also for Mountain 2 Beach’s social media. This year’s Half Marathon started in a different location, the half way point of the full Marathon. Of course I wanted to be there to document the change of location for their social media account but also for the directors to get an overall feel of what it looked like.
When working at an event where there are thousands of people and road blocks (even though I had a ‘Event Vehicle’ pass in my windshield there are times when you just can’t get through because of the runners) I spent a lot of time talking with the directors and looking at maps to plan my day. My goals on race day were to photograph the start of Half Marathon and 5K before I started to photograph the finish line fun. I didn’t have to worry about the setup of the finish line because they were setting up the day before and I was there for that. When photographing an event I live by the saying “Show up early and stay late”! On race day the main item that needed to be setup at the Half Marathon was the start line!! There are a lot of little things that are going on a start line but to me the two most important things are the porta potties and the start line. Photographing porta potties at 3 in the morning isn’t glamours. I’m at the event to photograph two different categories. My favorite is photographing the athletes pushing their bodies to the limit doing what they love. The other and not as glamours is documenting what the event looks like for the directors to reference at a latter date. That includes the place of porta potties. Plus, while photographing anything and everything, I’m either writing my self notes or making mental notes of different thing I’m seeing or hearing to pass along to the directors.
After the last wave of Half Marathoners took off after 6am, I booked it opposite direction of the runners up the hill to the truck. Off I went to the finish line for all runners but also the location of the Inside Track Beach Front 5K. A few minutes before the 5K was set to start the police do a “hard shutdown” (no go on cars on the road) on the roads where the runners will coming through. My timing was right on do to my planning ahead, I was waved through by the police. Parked and made my way over to the 5Kers. After that I was wondering the finish line and expo area until just about everyone crossed the finish line.
My main goal for the event was to document that over all of the event. There are a team of photographers at the event photographing the runners. These photographers are lead my Dan Holmes. He has been photographing the runners at Mountains 2 Beach for years!
