Volunteer Time (2)

I wasn’t going to volunteer this week. I was going to run with my GoPro to give you a flavor of my local parkrun. However, when the volunteer email went out on Thursday, the event was desperately short of volunteers. I decided I would help out. I could get my easy paced 6 mile run in later in the day. 

Course set up and turn around Marshall sounded good to me. I’d set the course up and get a 5K walk in with a finishers time too. Two for the price of one.

I turned up nice and early to get my instructions and the trolley full of signs and cones for marking the course. As I’ve run the course a few times I knew where the signs went. But it was nice to get an annotated map of the route that showed all the sign locations. Every sign was numbered. A place for everything, and everything in its place. So easy a caveman could do it.

I was under the impression that this would be an easy task. Walk 1.5 miles, stopping every now and again to put signs and cones out. How difficult could it be?

It can be pretty difficult to put the signs into hard ground that hadn’t seen rain in a few weeks and by the time I reached the turn around I was hurrying and only had 5 or 10 minutes before the event started. 

The turn around comes at the top of a short, steep slope. I had to haul the trolley to the top of the grade to finish putting cones and signs out. That was tough. I have a whole new respect for people who push strollers on races. You are amazing!

The turnaround. It really is a steep slope.

Turnaround set up

I got a few minutes peace and quiet before the runners started to turn up. There was a fairly even flow of them. Most managing a smile even after coming up the climb.

Chandru, accompanied by tailwalker Jeff. Chandru set a new PB for the course today. 

Once tailwalker Jeff, and the remarkable Chandru Sharma, one of our partially sighted walkers, came through, I could tear things down and head back. I carefully made doubly sure that I picked up every sign and cone that I’d put out a couple of hours before. 

Volunteering is very rewarding. I really enjoyed myself out there today. If you haven’t volunteered at a parkrun before, I recommend you do. 

Also this week, we received our new parkrun “bling”. Signs, flags, and volunteer vests. Brooks Running is the official sponsor of parkrun in the US and we now have equipment that is branded with their name. Thank for supporting Parkrun, Brooks!

Photo: Cynthia Smith Strack

Photo: Cynthia Smith Strack