Before the first athlete arrives, four people are running cable across a wet infield.
The meet starts at nine. The timing crew starts at five, in the dark, aligning a camera on a finish line nobody can see yet.
Everything the crowd will complain about — a delayed result, a missing split — traces back to something that happened in these four hours. Almost none of it is visible from the stands.
If we do our job right, nobody knows we were here. That is the whole job.
The canopy is only the beginning. A veteran meet-day bag, unpacked item by item.
No track, no budget, eleven kids. Four seasons later there are ninety on the roster.
Pacing lights on the rail, rabbits in every seeded heat, and a crowd that stays until the last 5000.
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