More to a race than running

As you may of noticed, I race quite a lot. I would love to give back and volunteer more but I don't drive so it's hard enough getting to a race to run.  Trying to get there even earlier to help out is even more difficult.  Plus there isn't a whole lot of Sundays that I'm not racing.  I still feel bad about not helping more so when Alan from BTR asked for some volunteers to help with the Vitality Liverpool Half race packs I decided to go and give a hand.

After tail running it at parkrun I got the train to Liverpool and spent a very fun 3 hours stuffing race numbers and information booklets into envelopes.  I met some lovely people, Pat, Alyson and Vicky (who had only existed on Facebook until this point) and we actually had a great laugh whilst getting the packs ready.  Alan kept us supplied with drinks and snacks, told us lots of interesting stories of his amazing running past (we got to see him running LM as a fairy) and I got to know a lot more about four very nice people.  We also got to watch out for numbers of people we know and we may or may not have stuck in note in and pretending to burn one of the packs! Alan even gave us a goody bag for helping out and makes a mean cup of tea.

I don't know exactly how many race packs we got sorted but by the end of the day there was boxes of sealed envelopes everywhere and the majority was done.  Just makes you think though about the vast amount of work that goes on before and after each event to get us to the race start line.  This was just one small element of it but it's worth remembering next time the race pack lands on the door mat that there's much more to a race than running.  Alan told us about a book that is planned showing photos of behind the scenes to get a race ready.  I think that will be really interesting and I'll certainly be volunteering to do race packs again because it was such a fun day.

The race packs have now all been posted but please try to resist contacting BTR if you haven't got yours yet. They usually always turn up but some post is slower than others. If it hasn't arrived by Thursday 27th March then please email yvonne@btrliverpool.com.  She's lovely (she sorted out my double entry very quickly) and she'll get it sorted for you.  For more information about the race please click here.