Volunteering For Run & Raisin' 2012

The best way to give back to the running community is to volunteer for a running event and when such an opportunity presented itself, I had no hesitation to put my name forward.  Run & Raisin' 2012 was held on 31 Mar 2012 and organised by the TOUCH Young Arrows (TYA), whose mission is to nurture the young (children & teens), holistically and help them realize their potential by providing educational, social, emotional and mental support to them and their families.  Besides me, Christopher, Molly, BrokenRunner, Terence, Kayano and daughter, PassionRunner, Ayin, Zco, ACLeong, etc. also volunteered for the event.  We were all grouped together to man the u-turn cum aid station at the 5km mark.

On the morning of 31 Mar, it rained rather heavily in the early morning and I wished I could sleep in.  Thankfully, some of us were told to report slightly later and I managed to steal another 30mins of sleep.  At around 7.20am, we arrived at one of the carpark along ECP and proceeded to our aid station location about 1.5km away, at the entrance of some golf course.  As it was still drizzling, the OIC in charge of us informed us that there would be a delay to the start of the race.  Hence, there was no need to setup the aid station until further instructions were given.  So we waited and chatted and took photographs.  It wasn't until about 8.45am that the timing company started to setup their timing system while we began to move the tables, water and cups from the shed.  There was also a need to layout the trash boxes some distances after the aid station - something that only runners could think of.

At around 9.10am, I heard the 2 men setting up the timing system commented that the race already started and no one had informed them.  Luckily, they had finished testing the system.  As for our aid station, we were still pouring water into the cups when we saw the first few runners running towards our direction some 5mins later!  Someone took a cone to place after the timing system that marked the u-turn point.  And the rest of us quickly split ourselves into 3 groups - one group in charge of filling the water into cups, one group handing out water on the other side of the path and one group handing out water on the near side of the aid station.  I took 2 cups and joined PassionRunner on the near side of the path nearer to the tables, handling out the water.  Slowly, as we became more efficient in our task, we started to grab 3 cups at a time, and then 4 cups at a time.  Then came the mid-pack runners and business soared for a while.  It probably lasted for about 30mins or so before we were able to relax a bit.

At around 10am, Tekko and ACLeong (who positioned themselves further up the route to spot the fast runners and the last few runners) came back to the aid station.  But we had to keep the aid station open until the organiser gave us the green light to pack up.  We then spotted a few more back-of-the-pack runners.  After sending the last runners off, we packed up every thing less a table and some cups of water for the OIC to man before leaving.  I thought we did a great job.  The only complaint that I had was the way we were told to "handle" the water during the packing up.  Water was poured away - rather needlessly although the amount was not significant.  There are people around the world who do not have water to bath or clean water to drink and here we are, pouring away perfectly drinkable water onto the grass patch!  It's a sin that I hope I would not witness again.  Overall, I enjoyed myself and hope there would be more of such opportunity to volunteer.