Piney Woods Trailfest Aid Station Review - Houston Area Trail Runners

Jose Quintanilla

Piney Woods Trailfest 2/9/2013

Aid Station Reviews

The week prior to the Piney Trails 5k/10/20 Mile & 50k, HATr had the opportunity to manage packet pickup and a water station for The Woodlands Church Stop Traffick 5k. We had a blast doing so and we COULD NOT wait to do another. This time however, I would be manning the aid station w/o Jeremy & Rob, as they were participating in this event at Piney Trails.

Piney Woods Waterstop 2

I reached out to my sister and my younger cousin to help Hat’r run the Aid Station for The Run In Texas group, they eagerly accepted the challenge, and with knowing I would also have the assistance of the lovely Rachel Goyen(Rob’s wife) I knew we had everything covered. Morning of race day was extremely awesome, we were running a few minutes behind and still had to get to the tables that Bill & Jay had setup for us the night prior. The entrance gate to the park was locked, but, luckily, with the man up stairs watching out for us, someone was exiting the park and we were able to sneak on by. We knew the race was beginning at 7:30am and we were driving through the wrong side of the gate at 7:28a, talk about cutting it close!

The 4 of us(Chelsea, Alec, Rachel, Myself) rolled up to the tables(thanks to Bills photo assisted directions) just in time to begin setting up the tables. We found a plastic tub that had everything we could possibly need to keep the runners fueled up. It was truly awesome to see how well Bill stocked up our Aid Station was. We had gallons of water and Gatorade, we had plenty of M&M’s, Pretzels, Cookies, Bananas and more, we also received great instructions for keeping track of the runners coming through our aid station. We got right to filling up the coolers and setting up the food for the runners. We setup our banner and the 4 of us got the Station UP and functional within 7 minutes!

Piney Woods Waterstop

I put my Chelsea in charge of managing the runners Bib #’s and Times, Alec was our hype man and entertainment as well as our electrolyte man. I handed out water and directed food management and Rachel kept us all in check and was absolutely awesome with encouraging all the runners that came by our station. Within a few minutes we had the front pack of the 20 Miler’s coming by the Aid station, looking down at my watch, I saw that the head of the pack was at Mile 5 in under :40 minutes, these guys were smoking. The first person to stop at the station was our very own Robert Smith(who also won the 20miler and set the course record!!!), Robert mentioned how great he was feeling so far and I told him to finish up his apple, drink, and get the heck out of here, he laughed, and did as I said, so I’ll take full credit for his course record!

The runners started to pile in, everyone at the aid station did their job awesomely, Chelsea was managing Bib’s and Time numbers and the rest of us kept everyone fueled up and ready to roll. It was at this point, the new runner in my wished I signed up and skipped volunteering, however, this was around the time when Rob Goyen came marching in and then i thought to myself(self, you get to hang out and not torture yourself…AWESOME). Rob came in with empty bottles and I recharged them and started to walk him out of the Aid station because I knew he had a goal of keeping his pit stops to 10 seconds or less.

Several minutes later, in came Jeremy Hansen, bottles ready for electrolytes and ready for some goodies. It was so awesome to be on the other side of the table, I knew full and well what every runner was going through as they came and left our aid station. I’ve now completed 2 Ultra Marathons and 1 Half Marathon, so knowing the physical strains as well as the emotional strains that comes with running wasn’t new to me.

I knew these runners would feel awesome going through loop 1 and for those doing the 20 Mile & 50k, they were going to need the support both physically and mentally and it was truly an honor.

I’d like to take this time to give a special thanks to Bill Gardner with Run In Texas for putting on an awesome race and for allowing us to assist with the Aid station. Thanks to Jay and company for keeping us up to date w/anything related to the race and bringing us awesome soup and Delicious potatoes! and of course, congratulations and thank you to all the runners!

Jose Qunitanilla

One thought on “Piney Woods Trailfest Aid Station Review”

Willem van Dam says:

February 13, 2013 at 5:15 AM

Very excited to see your report. Your aidstation was awesome. You guys, and gal, had it all down to a science. It was really nice of you to get a few gels from the car and help me out with those. I did well in my 50k race and want to give you some of the credit (the rest of the credit goes to the man upstairs who gives me my health, and let you into the gate). I had already posted a thankyou on FB but was not sure if you would find it there, so I’m glad I get to thank you in a more direct way here.


Tejas Trails		Run In Texas

Luke's Locker		Thunderbird Energetica

HCTR		Endurance Buzz

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