BLOG365

I joined Great Lakes Running Girl’s BLOG365 team, so expect to read a lot of thoughtless ramblings in the upcoming year!
I’m also in charge of volunteer recruitment for our local New Year’s Eve race and it’s getting down to the wire. Where are all of my volunteers?
It’s not like you have to be a world-class runner to be a volunteer.
I’m sure that most races encounter the same problem of trying to lure non-runners to help out at running events. What type of enticement can you have for them? What would make people give up their precious time to stand and hand out fluids?
The lure of a free T-shirt and all of the Gatorade you can drink obviously isn’t enough.
We try to tell every runner that they need to be on the other side of the fluid station to get a real feel on how important volunteers are to having a successful event. As I said in several emails to my running club, ‘how would you like to have a serf-serve fluid station when you trying to run a PR?’.
We even need people to pour beer after the races have concluded. These volunteer spots filled up pretty fast.
Hopefully we’ll have enough volunteers and a great event.