|
|
tburt75
Member
|
|
|
Joined: 30 Aug 2002
Posts: 346
|
| Back to top
|
|
 Posted: 04/07/03 - 18:25 Post subject: Thank the volunteers and event staff: Here's why (5 pages)
Thank the Volunteers and Staff: Here’s why
“Thanks for putting on a great race! Top notch!” – Unknown
“Great job Jed, first class event.” – Unknown
When two people completely unknown to me said the above sentences, all my pain went away for a few short seconds, my fatigue was forgotten and a warm feeling welled up inside me. Sounds cheesy doesn’t it? But when you’re behind the scenes at a triathlon, lots of things can go wrong, and if after all those things go wrong someone says to you, “Great job!”, then you know you did your job, because those people never saw what went wrong. As a triathlete, they always tell you to thank the volunteers and event staff, I always made it a point to do so, but never really knew what it meant to them until now.
I don’t consider myself great, or even exceptional at anything I do. I’d like to consider myself just above average. This past weekend I was involved in a triathlon as Director of Communications for CFT Sommer Sports (www.triflorida.com), it was the most amazing, and also hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Here’s a look at what it’s like behind the orange fencing, here’s why you should always thank the volunteers and staff, here’s my story:
• Friday, race day: T minus 40 hours.
In the days leading up to Friday I had been preparing media credentials, sending and confirming people to come to the race, collecting information and distributing it. Being my first triathlon behind the scenes, I was also brainstorming ideas to keep my part of the race under wraps. The first major concern was communication devices: NEXTEL phones. Questions I had were:
How do I track them?
How do I let people know how to use them quickly?
How do I do all of this, without actually meeting them?
How do I make sure they all get back to me when it’s all done?
If someone’s phone goes on the fritz, what’s the backup plan?
If something happens and I have to control and limit communication, how do I do so?
These were just some of the concerns on my plate, and I remedied most of them before race day. I set up a spreadsheet with everyone’s number, and name on it. I gave the responsibility of handing out and collecting phones from volunteers, to the run and bike coordinators respectively. I met with each coordinator and explained verbally how things would go down and they all understood. We didn’t have any extra phones so there was no back up plan. For controlling and limiting communication, I didn’t have enough time to make up a plan for that, so I just flew this by the seat of my pants. One of my goals was to make sure I had all the phones ready and waiting on Monday so that we didn’t have to pay another day of rental fees. This I was told was always a problem, it was my mission to fix it!
• 9 pm
I went to the office to start on another project: Memorabilia. Since this was the 20th anniversary of this event, Fred (Owner of CFT Sommer Sports) wanted to do something special so he had a VIP reception planned and also had me find out history of the race to start making an exhibit. Armed with limited resources and Photoshop, I went to town.
• 11 pm
I exhausted all of my talents and information and had to wait until Saturday when Fred said he’d bring in a bunch of stuff for me. I managed to get a bunch of signs printed and start on some stuff from 1984. I was happy with my progress and felt good going home. I also wanted to get some sleep for Saturday because my friend Jordana was coming up from Fort Lauderdale to ride with me at 5:30 am.
Saturday, race day: T minus 20 hours
• 5:30 am
I awoke to my alarm clock surprisingly refreshed. Jordana had arrived late Friday night and was sleeping in one of the other bedrooms of the house. I woke her up and we got under way. Beautiful riding weather, even more beautiful by the fact that the sun was just rising and shining through some really nice wooded areas we went through. The plan was to do the Olympic course so she could preview it for next year. That’s exactly what we did, took it nice and easy and finished in 2 hours. Got home, showered and ate, then hugged Jordana and left home for the last time until Sunday night.
• 8 am
I called Fred and he told me he left a bunch of stuff on my desk to go through and that he liked what I had going so far. I drove to the office and on my desk were 2 boxes full of press releases and news papers, along with 19 t-shirts, one for each year. I went about going through the newspapers and finding articles and results, photo copying them and getting them ready to be velcro’d to the display board. At noontime Fred showed up at the office and said, “It’s noon, gotta get stuff down there because registration is open!” I was under the impression that I had to have everything done by 6 pm. Doh. So I grabbed what I had, ran down to the race site and started setting up. I had a bunch of awards and mugs and other stuff, two tables and 6 boards to set up. The boards were a challenge because they kept blowing over, but I tied them down and things started coming together. I came back once for more information but had everything set up by about 3 pm.
• 4 pm
The exhibit was up and now it was time to set up the VIP area. The pavilion behind the exhibit was full of picnic tables and a mini-van which I had to get moved. At this point it was starting to become apparent that we were under staffed because everywhere I looked, stuff was ¼ or ½ done. Nothing seemed totally complete.
• 6 pm
The VIP reception started to get underway and I began meeting some people I had been emailing the previous week. The caterer had some good food, and the musicians never arrived so we set up a stereo system with some tunes. I met Andrew (www.myraceday.com owner and sponsor) and he’s a super guy. We talked for about an hour about all kinds of stuff while everyone ate and chatted. It was a nice relaxation period...and the last one I’d get until over 24 hours later.
• 8 pm
The reception over, it was time to get to work. I was under the impression that we’d be done with set up around midnight or so, get a few hours of sleep and come back to the race site at 5 am to do final touches. When we got our event crew together there were only 6 of us. Here’s a comparison:
Best Case Conditions: 15-20 people set up
75% participants volunteers
20-30 people breakdown crew
Our Conditions: 6 people set up
Less then 15% volunteers
6 (extremely tired) people breakdown
• Friday 8 pm to Saturday, 5 am
Without going into tons of detail, the 6 of us went about tackling each project that needed to get done in a furious order. Swim start, truck packing, transition set up, transition scaffolding, bike start and end, run start and end, finishing chute, registration tent…by the time I looked at my watch it was 4 am…and I had to move it ahead an hour because of daylight savings time. I would have to say that the best time was going to the warehouse and filling the trucks with everything we’d need for the race. The 4 of us had a great time tossing empty water containers around. At this point we were all tired, but tired enough to be silly. The grumpiness hadn’t settled in yet.
• 5 am, race T-minus 3 hours
At this point the major stuff had been taken care of and it was time for the details. Setting up lights for the pre-light racers, putting up pennants, sponsor banners, setting up the timing tent, dispersing 2000 pounds of liquids to various parts of the course… of all the things to do, only one thing on the list didn’t get done: Showers were never put up. At this point I was thinking that I could relax as communications director, but oh how wrong I was. Every time I had a second, I saw something that needed to get done and I did it. From emptying trash, to refilling water stations, to measuring the 5k run course and marking the road (15 minutes before the gun went off). We squeaked by on this one, and it was time to sit down and watch the fruits of our labor...NOT!
• 8:14 am, the gun goes off!
1200 racers enter the water in waves. I had seen and talked to briefly some friends that came up from Fort Lauderdale, but I was so busy I didn’t get to see them start or see any of them finish. Through out the race so many things happened and needed done that I can’t recall most of it. It was a blur of walking, talking, and driving. Some key points:
Communication was messed up because I forgot to give the bike station phones to the bike coordinator. As a result, one bike station ran out of ice, and another station had a biker ask to be picked up and it was a long time before I got the info and could pass it on. Also, since everyone had everyone else in their phones, often times the information ended up with the wrong person. Volunteers were so few that we had to move people from aid station to aid station because some of them were unmanned. A racer had a problem in the finishers chute and had to be hospitalized. Moving 500 racers out of the way of the ambulance was no easy task. We ran out of ice completely, and in desperation I drove my car to the nearest grocery store with a fellow event team member, and bought 60 bags of ice (two trips of 30). This was just some of the event problems, but they were all taken care of quickly and efficiently.
All I know is that none of the event team sat down once the whole day until breakdown. After the race ended, I sat (finally) in the blazing sun to give away awards. No one had the time to stick the metal stickers on the plaques the night before, so we had a line to get a plaque and a line to get your sticker. This was a nightmare to start, and I heard someone say, “They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” At that point I wanted to just quit…the frustration, the burning heat, and the fact that the particular racer had no sympathy for how much it takes to run a triathlon…the fact that many of us had already been awake and working physically for over 30 hours at this point. But as if he heard what happened, a good friend of mine came over and said, “Jed, excellent job! The race was great!” I felt like a million bucks at that point. Finally, an appreciative racer!
It was so hot during awards that I had to ask a racer for sunscreen because I hadn’t put any on yet and was burning up. I also had to keep drinking Gatorade and water. Throughout the weekend most of us had to change clothes because we were so dirty and sweaty. After awards were given out it seemed like we could take a rest….NOT!
No breakdown team was scheduled, so the extremely tired 6 of us went to work breaking things down. My feet were KILLING me, and I ran out of coffee and no doze so my mental capacity was slowing down to equal my physical aches and pains. I felt like I had run a double marathon. My back was aching, my lats were extremely sore from all the lifting, my feet were totally destroyed and I was constantly thirsty despite having tons of water and Gatorade.
Again, I was so tired and so many things got done from 3 pm to 7pm that I can’t remember most of it. I also was extremely tired and sort of droned on. The object of the breakdown was to take all valuable and other stuff that could be ripped off and get it in a truck, locked up. I remember thinking at least a dozen times of going to Fred and telling him I couldn’t take anymore, I just had to go home. 2 things went through my mind each time I took a painful step forward 1) he’d probably let me go 2) the other 5 guys had been there just as long, and they weren’t quitting. I had lots of mental wars with myself, but had to keep trudging on. My legs were so fried and chaffed that I was walking bold legged, and at about 1/20th my usual walk pace. I willed myself to ‘kick it into high gear’ but my body simply wouldn’t respond. I had 2 speeds, slow and stop. I kept having to take sitting breaks when my legs just couldn’t take it anymore. Around this time a couple straggling racers told me what a great event we held, I looked at them with a smile and just wanted to cry. More racers appreciating the hell some of us were going through.
We may have only been out there breaking down for 3 hours, but it was the longest 3 hours of my life. We all saw in each other that we weren’t going to quit, we COULDN’T quit…it was over when it was over. Above and beyond all of the physical and mental pain we were going through, we all still managed to joke around. None of us ever snapped at the other or slacked, it was the most mature crew of people I’d ever worked with in my life. There wasn’t a time I saw any of them sitting if there was something to be done. We all went beyond our duty, and managed to get our main duties done. I’m proud to have worked with this team, and look forward to working with them on the road this year as CFT puts on its Tri America series (www.triamerica.com).
• 7 pm
It’d been a long 37 hours, not 37 hours of watching movies, not 37 hours of telling people what to do. 37 hours of decisions, lifting, pushing, driving, walking, running, pulling, throwing, talking, etc. There’s only one other time when I felt like this in my whole life, and that was when I was 13 and went on a canoeing trip with the YMCA. I stayed up for 72 hours without coffee, as it rained the whole trip and I kept the fires going at night and paddled during the day.
When I got home I showered 47 layers of dirt off my body, threw away my socks, went to get some Chinese food and dropped on the couch with a corona in my hand. On the very last sip of that beer, I passed completely out.
18 hours later I awoke and felt mildly ok. By the time I got up and started getting things in order I was feeling fine, got some coffee and headed into the office: at noontime.
Now consider what I did and the fact that I’m paid to do it. The next time you see a volunteer, remember my story, assume they’ve already done the same thing, and at the end of the day they don’t get a single dime, nothing, zip, zilch. No, not every volunteer goes through a 37 hour grueling workout, but just the fact that they are taking the time out of their day to point you to the right place for free says tons about their character.
At the end of a race, thank every event staff and volunteer you see, it could be me, and if they cry right there in front of you with a smile on their face and you’ve read this: You’ll know why.
PS. It’s Monday and every NEXTEL phone rented is sitting in a box waiting to be picked up – I accomplished my goal.
PSS: without endurance training i'd have never made it through this weekend. No way no how. The only people left (us 6) at the end were all endurance athletes of some type.
|
)
