LITTLE ROCK (KTHV) - The countdown was on Saturday night for thousands of runners, hitting the pavement Sunday morning for the Little Rock Marathon.
THV 11's Max Seigle caught up with some runners Saturday and found them packing the Statehouse Convention Center to pick up their registration packets and more.
Enjoying a laugh in line, Rita Sharp arrived in Little Rock Saturday with a marathon to run Sunday.
"Hi, how are you?" Sharp asks the marathon volunteer at a check-in desk.
Coming in town from Texas, Sharp is going on her fifth marathon and using Little Rock as part of a running goal.
"It was a marathon to be done and I'm trying to get to my 50 states marathons done and this is just going to be one of them," Sharp said.
She's run three marathons just in the past three months but admits she's still a little nervous before this one.
"You still don't know until you're doing the run to see what kind of hills you're going to be hitting, what the terrain will be like," Sharp said.
Sharp said it was all about "a rest day" Saturday to settle her nerves.
We also caught up with Clay Lance. He came in town from Hope for his second half marathon.
"We're nervous today but not nearly like we were for the first one," Lance said.
He's here with members of his running club and shooting for eight-minute miles on race day. But on Saturday, he said, "As far as I'm concerned, no running. We're going to drink water, we just had pasta for lunch and we're going to have pasta tonight so I guess we are 'carbing' up."
The Statehouse Convention was packed with race volunteers helping everyone out on Saturday. Organizers say, across the board, they have at least 3,700 volunteers taking part this year and many will out Sunday morning.