A Whole Lotta Pink

A week and a half ago I volunteered with some friends at two 5k’s: The Color Run and The Komen Greater NYC Race for the Cure. In total, we did about 12.5 hours of volunteering.

On Saturday we woke up at the wonderful hour of 4am to make the trek to Brooklyn, aka where the color run was held. I actually ran the race last year and figured volunteering would be just as fun, and it was. 

Preparing for action 

My friends and I were stationed at the first “color zone”. It was our job to douse

thousands of happy runners in pink cornstarch.  For six hours we were on our feet dancing as well as wielding mustard bottles in dense clouds of pink fumes, but overall it was a great experience and I’m definitely going to drag more friends with me to volunteer next year.

On Sunday we also woke up at 4am to get to Central Park on time for the volunteer check-in at the breast cancer walk, obviously donning whatever pink clothes we could. We spent around six and a half hours working the baggage claim, a job which is much more strenuous than it sounds. We had to direct stubborn New Yorkers not in the race away from the barricaded site, keep track of every one’s personal items, organize bags with five digit id numbers numerically, just basically a lot of running back and forth. It was a long six-ish hours, but totally worth it. Everyone’s energy was great, and its always fun hearing total stranger’s stories, whether they’re checking in their stuff or beside you volunteering.  

There’s just something about the energy at races that I love so much, whether I’m participating or volunteering (gotta get those hours). It’s a fun way to work with and meet new people, even if you’re never going to see them again.