And here's my Race Volunteer Report!
It was a fabulous experience. I highly recommend volunteering! I firmly believe that everyone who races in any fashion should volunteer at least once, just to see how things work from the other side. It really gives you a different perspective on things and how much work it takes to put an event like this together.
For those of you not familiar, Tri for the Cure is a women's only triathlon here in Denver that benefits the Komen Breast Cancer foundation. This is a huge event...they had over 3500 registered participants yesterday, which is absolutely enormous for a triathlon. The Danskin triathlon series is another women's only triathlon (which I participated in last month), and is very similar, benefiting the Breast Cancer Research Fund. Due to the nature of these events, they attract a lot of first-timers, which is part of the beauty of them. Many, many women who you would never ever expect to see doing a triathlon are out there. And they do it. And become triathletes in the process!
My volunteer experience started with my alarm going off at 3:45 yesterday morning.
After I had been out at a party the night before and got to bed around midnight. Ouch. I was volunteering in the transition area, so we were the first ones that needed to be there, before athletes started arriving at 5. We got signs posted, trash cans distributed throughout the area, and then myself and another volunteer walked around for a little while. We had our handy-dandy permanent markers ready to body mark anyone who needed it (triathletes have their race number marked on their upper arm and leg so they can be identified on the swim and bike portions). By the time we had walked through (and answered a lot of questions from racers), the athletes were streaming into transition in full force, so we set up camp at the entrance where we could answer questions and do body marking. I spent about an hour and a half to two hours doing pretty much nothing but body marking. I had to squat down every time to mark the leg, and holy crow, do I feel it today! Not to mention the permanent marker fumes. I couldn't tell if I was loopy from lack of sleep or from the marker!
The first waves went off at 7 am, first the elite racers, followed by the breast cancer survivors. What amazing women! My fellow volunteers and I got the water station set up at the at the exit from transition to the start of the run, and that's where I spent the next 4 1/2 hours. Handing out cups of water, and yelling encouragement to every single woman that went by. The gratitude shown by the racers was so rewarding, and I know how much it means to have people cheering for you, so it was my mission to make sure that I didn't miss anyone!
After we received confirmation that the last racer was out on the run course, we helped clean up our water station and grabbed some trash bags to do a quick sweep through the areas of transition that had already been cleared out of by the racers. After that, I got the all-clear to head out (although we were down to just a few hard core volunteers at that point).
It was a blazing hot day, I spent 8 long hours on my feet, and my legs are still feeling it today, but I would (and probably will) do it all over again! I had one woman come up to me after the race and give me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek to say thanks. I had many, many racers tell me how much they appreciated me being there.
It was wonderful!