Volunteer! When it became clear that running the half this weekend was not wise, I talked my daughter into volunteering at a marathon water stop. Here we are, cups filled and ready for action: It was an enjoyable morning. We had to be to our post at Mile 7 by 6:30 am to fill water cups. We were done in plenty of time to get excited to see the wheelchair athletes followed by the elites. They came by us with about 35:00 on the clock!!! Most elites have special water bottles, so we could just cheer for a while. Once the regular runners started coming by, it was constant for about an hour. I have heard to try to make eye contact with water volunteers. It was helpful for the runners and me when they made eye contact or pointed at me to say, "I'm coming for your water." I was amazed at how many people said thank you to us volunteers. Many people even made jokes with us. From the perspective of the volunteers, consider wearing your name in large print on your shirt or hat. We wanted to cheer for you each by name! Depending on how you are feeling, wave, nod or somehow acknowledge our cheers. It makes us cheer louder! Thank us if you can. It was definitely our pleasure to be there, but a quick thank you feels good. The Grandmas Marathon organizers said it takes about 6,000 volunteers to make the day happen. In addition to the positive vibes from the runners, we were rewarded with tshirts, socks, drink tickets for the after party, lapel pins, decals, and a baggie of coupons. Wow, did we feel valuable! Maybe that is part of how they have been able to recruit an army of workers for the past 41 years. Consider being a race volunteer sometime. This was a large event, but races of all sizes need minions of worker bees to make the event successful. H and I had an awesome morning together. Hopefully the runners had as much fun as us. Here are photos of H pretending to run the marathon and D in the 5K last night. He has also been injured, but was able to make a comeback to place 12th of over 1,800 finishers. I'm a proud mama;-) Care to Comment? Have you ever been a race volunteer? Did you participate in any of the Grandmas Marathon events?
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AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
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