Iced bandanas ~ take a regular bandana and lay it in front of you like a diamond shape. Take ice cubes and place them horizontally about four inches below the top of the diamond at the top. Then begin rolling the bandana over the ice. Continue until the last corner is taken up so it looks like a burrito. Not too much ice or it's heavy. We've tried everything out there (bandanas with slots sewn into them, but they take time to poke the cubes down, and the neckbands that puff when you wet them, but they are too heavy and not cold enough. This burrito method seems to be the fastest and easiest method we've found.

Try a small cooler just for the neck bandanas. You can make up plenty ahead and always have one ready for the runner or crew as needed. Then your not dipping dirty hands into the ice that goes into the bottles to make bandanas.

A funnel works well to keep ice clean ~ We keep a funnel (plastic) in the ice chest to drain the fluid before filling the bottles with ice. Keep a funnel in every ice chest.

An ice pick helps break up ice. Keep it in a place that is safe and pre-determined so it can be put back every time.

Bottled water is dumped into ice in a round Igloo cooler with a spigot. We then place the clean bottles in a plastic bin hard enough to elevate the Igloo so that the bottle can be slid under the spigot. We use a bungee cord to stabilize the cooler and it sits right in the corner where we crew every mile. You'd be surprised how little bottled water you really need when you use the Igloo cooler with ice to begin with. If you use this method you don't have to deal with little bottles of water and so much trash. Just buy gallons and empty one gallon at a time. 

The chamois and towel trick ~ We drain the water from the iced coolers into a bucket or container. Then we dip the chamois into it and place it on the runners head and neck area. It's adds a great deal of cooling quality. Towels work also. We like the chamois because it stays wetter longer. We also use the drained water for filling the water sprayers. Make sure the mouth of the water sprayer is large enough to accommodate ice cubes. Some are painfully small and it takes the crew a lot of time to poke cubes down the hole.

Do not spray legs of runner with water unless they ASK because often the water drips down into the shoes, or chafes the thighs. Spray just the upper body as the runner requests.

Hope these hints help. Any advice or feedback is welcomed. We can all learn new tricks from each others experiences. There are always better ways to do things if we collectively work at it.

Denise Jones