Volunteering is one of the most rewarding aspects of parkrun, and the best thing is, it’s so simple.
Some roles need a little bit of training, but nothing that can’t be done within a few minutes.
Over in the Runs With A Barcode facebook group we shared what they did for their first volunteer role.
Hope they inspire you, or maybe someone you know who needs reassurance they can do it.
What was your first volunteering role?
- I was a Marshall at Ballarat parkrun in the middle of the winter of 2015. Seems like the cold didn’t frighten me off because I still volunteer now.
- Handing out barcodes at Cornwall Park back in the early days.
- I was Tail Walker at Tauranga’s inaugural.
- Timekeeper! My fave still.
- Timekeeping at Albert Melbourne parkrun.
- I was helping with the carparking at Penrith Lakes parkrun.
- Funnel manager – ???????? that was stressful at a busy parkrun!
- Timekeeping at Cairns, was always a worry with the old stop watch system, you were never too sure if the watch would upload correctly
- Marshal at St Peters parkrun in Sydney
- Backup timer, other timer got out of sync so my results were used so I didn’t feel like I had wasted my time ????
- I think I went straight to run report writer. I was terrified of some of those in person, in the moment roles, especially timekeeper…
- Timekeeper at Western Springs, seemed easy enough. I mucked up a bit at barcode scanning the first time I did it so have always preferred timing, especially with phones.
- Marshal at Shrewsbury as I was running a 10k (turned out to be 12k) at Ludlow in the evening. My first timekeeper role was at Tauranga inaugural with 272 participants. That was a bit scary!
- Timekeeper for me too. I’ve now done every role we have available.
- I actually can’t remember! I’ve done all our roles but have no idea what I did first.
- Timekeeping at Berwick Springs learning the ropes so I could launch ???? Sunny Inverloch.
- I think it might have been tailwalker.
- I was timekeeper, I did it two weeks in a row, then again a few months later. That was in 2016, not done it since but I’ve done plenty of barcode scanning.
Want to learn more about each volunteer role? You can see all the volunteer profiles I’ve featured on my blog in this link.