Giving Back

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from March 1999.)

One of the great strengths of American running is also one of its subtle weaknesses. We rarely suffer a shortage of runners willing to go any distance, anywhere there is a race that weekend. We often suffer from a shortage of workers willing to help conduct the races.

In this sport we are a nation of doers, not viewers. We would rather run in a race ourselves than watch others run it, now matter how fast they are and how slow we are.

Few events here are in danger of disappearing for lack of entrants. Many must limit their fields by setting maximum numbers (New York City and Chicago Marathons) or by imposing qualifying times (Boston Marathon).

The demand for space at starting lines is high and growing higher. The demand for volunteer workers grows too, and the supply remains short.

Race directors – who usually are volunteers themselves – forever beg for help. They never seem to have quite enough of it on race day.

The volunteers give up a weekend day to stand shivering in the cold or baking in the sun, delivering the aid that runners demand. For this the workers usually receive no more than a free T-shirt.

I often go to races as a guest of the directors. This lets me follow them through their race day, which usually begins after a sleepless night for them. They and their support troops arrive before the first runner, and stay long after the last one goes home.

Watching the start area come together, seeing the course from the standpoint of the workers, then observing the finish-line cleanup is something every runner should experience at least once. It tells several truths about this sport:

– Running the race may be one of the easiest tasks that day. At least it takes much less time than the scene-setting work that makes the running possible.

– Runners are abundant, and each has only one job to perform – running his or her own race. Workers are scarce, and each often does multiple jobs.

– Runners as a group are quick to complain and slow to compliment these workers. They hear little or nothing from the 99 percent of runners who go home happy, but hear much from the one percent who are not pleased.

The least we can do as runners is to say more thank-yous. Let the volunteers, those too often invisible heroes of the sport, know that we appreciate them.

The best we can do is to give back to the sport by serving as volunteers ourselves. Set aside an occasional race to stand and deliver assistance to the runners.

Christian churches promote the concept of the tithe, or giving one-tenth of one’s earnings to the church. Runners of all religions, or none, would do well to practice a form of tithing.

For every 10 races we run, we might agree to work at one. Hand out the race packets, work at an aid station, direct the traffic, read the splits, award the winners, assist the ill and injured, distribute the food.

Doing this would help a sport that is always long on runners and short on helpers. It would also help us to be slower with complaints and quicker with compliments when next we run a race.

UPDATE FROM 2014

My running in races has fallen off from a few a year in 1999 to one every few years now. But I’ve compensated by standing and watching more often.

Usually I’m there as a coach, which doesn’t count as volunteerism because I’m paid modestly for being there. Occasionally I truly volunteer.

The most humorous role was at a recent marathon (unnamed here to protect the guilty). I drove with friends to the halfway point, where no official was turning the runners around. We set out cones, which had been dumped beside the road, and became course monitors.

At another race, I volunteered to print out individual results for runners at the finish line. Best job ever – giving them proof of what they’d just earned.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]