Helping at Races

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lesley thirkell
Posts: 151
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 9:47 am

Helping at Races

Unread post by lesley thirkell »

Over the course of a year Fife AC puts on around 40 races and many hundreds of runners, from Fife AC and lots of other clubs, enjoy the events. These races vary from the massive Devil’s Burden to much smaller Midweek Series races. The races are a mixture of hard work and socialising, and it’s clear that many people very much enjoy the events, which is wonderful. However, behind the scenes, it’s not quite so positive. On the whole, the same people are responsible for organising the events, setting up the courses, taking registration, marshalling, recording at the finish, providing and serving the after-race teas, uploading the results and so on. They cannot be expected to continue doing so much. It’s become clear that without significantly more help, we won’t be able to continue putting on the same number of races and that seems a real shame. Recently 2 club members volunteered to take over and organise the Ceres 8 – with huge success. Some members of Kirkcaldy Wizards have taken over races in their area. Many thanks to them. We would like to encourage either individuals or groups to take over other events. We would also ask that everyone who runs in the Fife AC races chooses a few events a year to help at rather than to run in. It doesn’t even need to be runners who help – family and friends would be equally welcome. If everyone could do help out a couple of times a year, it would make a very big difference. We fully appreciate that there will be events when people can’t help but we hope that over 12 months there will be at least two or three events when everyone could volunteer. Helping out doesn’t require much, just time and good humour! Training and support in all aspects of putting on races can be provided.

We have 2 events coming up: the Trail Championships in Falkland (2.9.18) and Giffordtown 5K (7.10.18). We would really appreciate it if some people who’ve not been able to help in the past could volunteer to help at one of these races. Once the proposed race schedule for 2019 has been agreed, we’ll publish the list here and ask for help. Unfortunately, without more commitment to help, some races will have to be cancelled.

If you’d like to offer to help, please either post here or email secretary@fifeac.org and also president@fifeac.org
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Fife AC Admin
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Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2012 6:18 pm

Re: Helping at Races

Unread post by Fife AC Admin »

Now that we’re approaching Fife AC’s race season, we’d like to renew our request for club members, family members and friends to volunteer at a couple of races over the year. Club members will only be able to enter the draw for Fife’s places at the London Marathon if they have helped at a minimum of two events during 2019.

A list of all our events can be found at http://www.fifeac.org/events/events-by-date.html

For each race we need help with a variety of tasks: setting up the course; taking entries; marshalling; timekeeping; recording finishers; doing results; helping with teas; clearing up afterwards, and so on. Many of these tasks don’t require any particular skills – just enthusiasm! If you’re interested in being trained up to officiate at the finish or to process results, we’d be even happier to hear from you!

Some people have asked for a mechanism to volunteer in advance so we’ve created a new email address – volunteeratraces@fifeac.org. This will go to the various race organisers. Please indicate which event(s) you can help at and what task you can do.

The race organisers will also post a request for volunteers on the Forum and on Facebook in the lead up to each event and again we’d be grateful if you could let us know if you can help, and what task you could do.

We can’t put on our races without volunteers so many thanks for your help and support!!!
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