VoluntEARing at the Tink Half Expo

As part of this year’s Project ME I decided my act of kindness for last week would be to voluntEAR at the Tink Half expo, and since my room reservation was for Thursday- Sunday and my fellow DisBroads where not arriving until Friday Thursday seemed like a great time to do it.

 

As a volunteer you get a free volunteer race shirt, which in this case was a long sleeve purple t-shirt, a certificate, and a meal during your shift. If you work 2 or more shifts you also get a free theme park ticket, but I didn’t have the time for that.

I arrived to my 1:00 check in about 10 minutes fashionably late, but thankfully I wasn’t alone so no one noticed. I try to be on time, really I do, but something always happens to prevent it.

After checking in at the volunteer check in table I was handed my shirt, a bottle of water and was instructed to fill out a name badge to wear during my shift. Since I was late I barely sat down and we were already breaking off into groups. It was then that I found my friend Tracy, who was also volunteering and she managed to get us a hook up to go upstairs and give out the race shirts!

              

Although for me that was short lived because I got pulled and ended up going back downstairs to help distribute the shirts and bags for the kids’ races, which was fun and allowed me to keep an eye on the lines! Towards the end of the evening there were no lines so I ran over to print out my waivers and went from one booth to the next and picked up both my half marathon and 10k bibs in a matter of 5 minutes!!

All in all it was a pretty fun experience, and one I wouldn’t mind doing again, if given the opportunity!

Have you ever volunteered to help at a race before?