I get up at 5 AM so I can get to the race by 7 AM, and the start at 8. After shooting four waves of starters I run over to another section of road and shoot four mobs running down the street as things have not broken up yet.Then I move to another location and wait about an hour for the finishers of the 1/2 marathon to start coming through.
For the next five hours I am standing in one spot, photographing runner after runner, which my hands cramping up, my legs and back cramping up, and my neck cramping up since I don't have time to move for most of the time. This also means no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, no nothing. After the first hour of shooting, i.e. looking through a pinhole, my eyesight is so blurry I just put the focus square over some blurry form of a runner and hope that AF does its job.
Now add to this that it is 55° and the wind is blowing into me the whole time. And it is raining, which means the front of my lens is getting coated in rain. I can wipe it clean, but this lasts about 30 seconds before it starts to cloud up again. So I resort to wiping the front of the lens with my hand so that the mist forms drops and falls to the bottom of the front of the lens, repeating this every few minutes or so. The mist also throws off the AF, so I am hoping that much harder.
After 9,500 photographs I can call it a day and go home. Luckily I don't have to edit.
Of course some people should probably pay more attention to the race instead of the technology they are carrying.
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