What can I do with aaaaaaall my free time? Well, if I volunteer it, it’s gotta to be running related, right?

Last week I found myself, along with 30 peeps from my team manning the water tables on the east side for the Corporate Challenge. 

If you haven’t heard of this event, all you need to know is that it is MASSIVE. Companies sign up their employees and they all compete against each other. The result of that is that you’ll find around 18,000 people in Central Park. That alone is insanity. The other crazy factor is that they’re doing a 3.5 loop course. It’s a lot of people in a very tight area, in a short course. And, because we have so many companies in NYC that want to participate, this happens TWO days in a row; that’s 36K people running, in two days!!! Well, something like the first 3 or 4 thousand are running it, and the rest are walking the course. 

I had been there in previous years, just watching during my run, and I was scared. I saw lots of people tripping, as there were no corrals or d/b-tags, it was a free for all. I also witnessed lots of people cutting across the reservoir (shame on them!). A mayhem run.

We got there two hours before the race and set up tables, set up cups, filled the cups, and soon it was show time. 

They had corrals and timing tags this year!!!!! FABULOUS!!! The fast runners came along and it was quite exciting, I managed to spot a few of my friends (including RW’s Jeff Dengate) and yell like a maniac… but soon it was crazy busy!! The tables were bopping and everybody was thirsty! We kept refilling and luckily we never run out of water but it was really really crowded. Can you imagine 18 thousand people in a 3.5 loop? Crazy.

Still, everyone was happy, even us, soaking wet as we were!

And, this fun just ads to the track meet my team organized a couple of weeks ago!

It was set up in the East River Track on a Saturday morning. We had lots of events: the mile, 2 mile, relays, 800s, 400s, everything! We had a lot of people competing and a lot of us who were volunteering: you need a lot of people if you want a track meet to be this OSOM. I had a few friends come to race at the meet, from other teams too, and they were quite impressed. We had lots of people doing timing, clocking, setting up, organizing, manning the water tables, doing the announcing, and I was doing Registration!

I didn’t get to watch all the events as I was getting people signed up/in and stuff, but by mid-morning we were not getting any more new people so I was free to watch, and scream a lot too, who are we kidding?

—I am apparently being blown away by super-speed!!! 

The whole event took around 4 hours, though most of us were there a couple of hours early to set up and help.

By the time we were done, some were tired from the racing, some were sunburnt, some were starving, but we were all happy!! And ready for more pictures and more food, as usual!!

The Professional Race Volunteer (the Corporate Challenge & the DW Track Meet)