The alternative parkrun weekend: volunteering

Following Friday's 7km run into work, I figured I'd better follow advice to not overdo things, so I chose to make this the weekend when I volunteered for the first time. I'd seen that the Town Moor parkrun was asking for help to fill its slots, so I got in touch. The next morning, there I was freezing my fingers off getting ready to marshal for the first time.

Gotta say, I'm not naturally social. Smalltalk is definitely not my thing. Before the start, I probably interacted more with someone's dog (Albi was lovely, mind) than the rest of the volunteers. That said, many thanks to Alison for taking the above photo.

Anyway, I'd been assigned the marshal role as one of three at "gate number 3" — like I knew where that was! 😂 Turned out was a gate leading onto/off the moor on Grandstand Road, near the Blue House roundabout. This was the gate I'd gone through on the Race for Life last year, though for the parkrun, only the narrow pedestrian gate was opened rather than the wide vehicle gate. The other two marshals at my post were Paul and Gracie Patterson (father and daughter). Paul was properly suited to the role, being very outgoing, friendly and positive and was a great person to have there for my first time.

When the run started, the first we knew of it was a crackle on the walkie-talkie, but soon you could see the front-runners making their way up the edge of the moor towards us. It was a bit weird seeing it as a spectator and when they made it to where we stood (ready to direct them around a hairpin), I was a bit useless as anything other than a marker post. I gave the odd pathetic little clap of encouragement (which felt awkward, as they'd not long passed the 1km mark), but it was Paul who was doing all the talking, knowing many of the regulars by face if not name.

I'll admit that at this point, it felt like I was just paying my parkrun tax and not really being well suited to it. But once we could see the leaders (as distant specks) making their way off the moor again around the 3km mark, it was time to someone to man the gate to direct them back in towards the finish while the tail end was still passing us for the first time. And this was where I started to really enjoy it. 🙂

To be honest, even on a run, I've clapped the leaders more than once. At Newbiggin, you get to see their pace when they pass you in the opposite direction and it's damned impressive. So while I had to stand like a frozen scarecrow with my arm out pointing to the gate here, it was genuine admiration I spouted with all the "Well done!"s and "Keep it up!"s. I got right into it and it just got better when you saw the smiles on people's faces and got the odd "Thank you, marshal!" back in return. The more I did it, the more I smiled and the more the runners smiled back; like a virtuous circle. By the time we got to close the gate again, I'd directed and encouraged 450 runners, which is a mad number!

So, while I was a bit unsure at first, I'm actually pretty keen to get my volunteering ratio up to one for every 10 runs by the time I hit my 30th parkrun. Not sure whether it'll always be at the Town Moor, but I'll leave that decision for later. I'd actually be quite keen to do Carlisle Park in Morpeth, as they're a pretty small event and I want to support them.