Dartford parkrun 49 - eggplant

Anyone involved in parkrun will be well aware that there is a new milestone club in town. However, this one is not for running - it is for volunteering. To reach this milestone, a person must be credited as a volunteer on 25 different occasions.

Like its running counterparts, this club has a reward in the shape of its own milestone t-shirt and along with the rest of the clubs, they are now supplied by Tribesports. During the design process, parkrunners were given the opportunity to vote on a preferred colour for this new shirt, and as you can see from the photo below, the purple (eggplant) t-shirt won!

v25 [photo: richey]

In July 2015, the first batch of shirts became available to order, and as I had reached my 25 volunteer status way back in 2012, I was included in the first batch of recipients. I placed my order and the t-shirt arrived well in time for me to debut it at Dartford parkrun 49, which incidentally was also the last event of our first year.

In an attempt to try to be helpful, I have provided some feedback on my shirt below. For reference I am about 168cm tall and about 56kg. I usually buy clothes with a 34 inch chest or a 28-29 inch waist. So basically I'm very similar in stature and build to your typical long-distance runner (Mo, Haile and Bekele etc..).

Good: The quality of the shirt is superb, I love the colour and I am very happy and proud to wear the shirt. The ordering process was straight forward and delivery was speedy - Considering the amount of shirts being distributed, I was expecting a longer wait, so I really must give Wiggle's distribution system a big thumbs up. The neck, arms, shoulders and chest are the best fitting areas of the shirt, but go any lower and it's not quite the same story....

Bad: The waist area is a little baggy on me, which I was expecting considering the 'regular fit' description. However, it is the length of the garment that really disappointed me -  it is almost 5 inches longer than what I would consider the 'correct' length for me. I have to tuck it into my shorts to avoid looking like I'm wearing a dress (the shirt is strategically tucked in in the photo above).

I have read some comments from Tribesports advising people to downsize if they want to have a closer fit and take full advantage of the technical features. However, this was never an option for me as the small mens shirt (36-37 inch chest) was the smallest option available. I will of course continue to wear the (tucked in) shirt with pride, but I would urge the powers that be to look again at the sizing options. Considering the 'regular fit' design and the advice to downsize, I definitely think there needs to be an extra small option (not just in chest size, but also reflected in the length of the shirt - remember, not all of us are over 6ft. tall) in the mens range.

Please do not take this post as me being ungrateful and complaining about a free gift. I am just trying to give some open and honest feedback. The fit of a t-shirt (or clothing in general) is a very personal thing, and I appreciate that you can't please everybody. The people at either end of the size scale are always more likely to encounter problems of this nature and it's not the first time I've had this problem. If this was an ordinary run-of-the-mill running shirt that I had ordered and paid for, I would be returning it for a refund as I simply wouldn't wear an item of clothing with the aforementioned length issue. But of course, this is much more than an ordinary t-shirt.

Anyway, the subject of the post was Dartford parkrun event 49.

The day started with a playground workout which consisted of an circuit training style session. I used an app on my phone to set 30 second intervals with 30 seconds of rest between each period of work. I used the following system - 'upper / core / lower' with the upper alternating between pulling (biceps and back) and pushing (chest, shoulders and triceps) movements. There's a lot more to it than that, and I'll write about my playground workouts in more detail in a later post.

After setting up the course with Richey (ED), I took on the role of timekeeper again and it really was an exercise in finish funnel perfection. Both timekeepers and the tokens stayed in synch for the entire run. There was no funny business in the finish funnel (unlike the previous week) and the results were expertly processed while I spent a good deal of time having a good ol' chin-wag with a fellow parkrun tourist.

Dartford parkrun 46 - no pressure

I was back on the stopwatch for Dartford parkrun 46. A role I've now done twice and I must say that I really love it. All it takes is the ability to press two buttons - one to start the timer and one to register a time for each runner as they cross the finish line at the end of their run. However, it does require the ability to stay focussed on the incoming runners and also to not get too caught up in any of the post-run conversations.

that must be my concentrating face [photo: ann langdon]

It is described as one of the high pressure roles and this became apparent when my co-timer's stopwatch didn't properly register one of the runners. That meant that I had the solitary 100% stopwatch record in my hands and couldn't afford any slip-ups! In the end it worked out absolutely fine and everyone was accounted for.

timekeeping, balancing and listening [photo: ann langdon]

One of the most memorable moments was when eight runners all hurtled into the finish funnel within the space of four seconds - I managed to click fast enough to register three of them with exactly the same time. I imagine that this kind of situation lasts for minutes over at some of the busier venues (maybe I'll step up my game and volunteer as timekeeper at one of them one day).

You may notice the lack of a hi-vis vest in the photo. There's a simple explanation - We had so many volunteers that we ran out (and I'm not sure where my personalised one is at the moment). Which I guess is quite a nice position to be in and I'm certainly not complaining.

Dartford parkrun 44 - tick tock

I think it's important for members of any core parkrun team to have an intimate knowledge of how to perform all of the volunteering roles required to stage a parkrun event, and as I had decided to give my knee some proper recover time I wanted to use the break as an opportunity to plug my volunteering knowledge gaps.

The first of these gaps was timekeeping. Now you'd think I would have done this plenty of times before and be quite fluent in it. While I had been the half-way timer at Riddlesdown parkrun in the past, I had never actually performed the role at the finish line [blog7t: Riddlesdown parkrun 58 - my first halfway timer experience]. The honest truth is that out of all of the volunteering roles, this one scared me the most and as a result I had always avoided it.

the gardener's have been getting their creative streak on again [photo: 7t]

Here is the official description of the role from the parkrun website;

The timekeeper is responsible for recording the times of all finishers. This can be a high pressure role, particularly at our busier events. For every runner that crosses the finish line on their own two feet, the timer will record that time using a timing device. This data is then combined with the data from the Barcode Scanners. Our events are provided with multiple timers, so there will normally be someone operating a backup timer.

So with it being time to banish those fears, I put name on the roster as timekeeper and I was happy to see that one of our seasoned regular timekeepers, Harley, was down for his fifth occasion in this role. As it says in the description above, timing duties are normally performed by two people. Ultimately, only one set of timing data is used for compiling the results and which one is used depends on how things go for each of the timers on the day.

i'm getting better at the tree, but worse at writing the letter 'u' [photo: ann langdon]

After setting up the course (and chalking some motivational messages onto the route) with Richey and Adam, I got myself suitably refreshed on how to operate our stopwatches. We have the Junsd Professional Stopwatch and it is very simple to operate - you just click the start/stop button when the run director starts the run, then as the runners reach the finish line you simply click the lap button to store each individual's finishing time. You can see the total number of 'lap times' (aka finishers) at the stop of the screen - it can store 500 lap times.

During the process I was aware that I could hear Harley's stopwatch beeping every time a runner crossed the line and it was difficult to distinguish his from my own. So I decided to use a stopwatch-at-the-ear-like-a-phone method which overcame the issue of not being sure which beep I could hear each time a runner crossed the line. Once all of the runners had had their times recorded I simply stopped the timer and stored the results ready for the results processor (Tessa) to do their magic!

the finish funnel crew [photo: dani]

I can't put into words how much I enjoyed being part of the finish funnel volunteer crew. It is certainly one of those areas where I felt very much part of a team, unlike a role like marshalling where I sometimes feel a little isolated at times. The timers communicate very closely with the volunteer handing out tokens (Angela) to make sure that both areas are in sync throughout the event. And the whole thing is overseen by the funnel manager (Adam). All of which I was aware of but it wasn't until I actually did it that I understood everything properly.

I'm taking off my core volunteer hat here and speaking just as a normal everyday parkrunner. I imagine you've heard it all before, but swapping your run for a bit of volunteering is great and none of the roles are actually that difficult. I'm guilty of always wanting to run and mostly leave these non-running volunteering roles to others while I help out with some of the 'can-also-run' roles. It really is a fantastic experience and I bet if you do it, you'll leave feeling just as satisfied as you do when you run at the event.

the finish funnel crew - with me displaying my phone-esque-style-timing-method [photo:dani]

So, to summarise my first experience of being a timekeeper - As long as you can stay focussed on the incoming runners and are able to press a button it's actually really easy and I feel a little embarrassed at having avoided it for so long.