Before you reach your finish line, they wake up at dawn: a tribute to those who, with a smile and a cup of water, make every one of our runs epic.
- Often, we runners are focused on ourselves, on our time and our medal, and we forget who makes the race possible.
- Volunteers are the unseen engine of every running event, a silent army working for our passion.
- Their day begins long before the starting gun, in the cold and the dark, setting up aid stations, the course, and the finish line.
- A small gesture from them, like a word of encouragement or a cup of water, can have an enormous psychological impact on a struggling athlete.
- Volunteering isn’t a fallback; it’s a profound way to experience running from another perspective, giving energy back to the community.
- A sincere “thank you” to a volunteer along the course has a human value that surpasses any personal record.
We’re a Bizarre Bunch, We Runners.
Egocentric by nature, obsessed with gadgets that measure our every bodily fluctuation, ready to argue for hours about the drop of a shoe or an integration strategy for a half marathon. We prepare for months, following training plans with monastic devotion, and on race day, we show up at the starting line feeling like the absolute protagonists of an epic film. Our film.
And in a way, we are. But every now and then, perhaps while we’re complaining that an aid station is positioned ten meters further than expected, we forget that the set for our personal blockbuster didn’t just materialize out of thin air. There’s an entire structure, solid and invisible, that holds everything up. A structure made of people.
The Most Precious Medal Is Their Smile
Can you picture it? You cross the finish line, your legs are two blocks of wood and your lungs are on fire. Someone approaches you, gives you a pat on the back, and places a piece of colored metal around your neck. You might barely manage to mumble a “thank you,” grab your medal, and go look for your race bag, already thinking about the post-race beer.
Stop for a moment. Rewind. Who was that person? Not a race official, not an organizer. It was a volunteer. A person who probably woke up before you did to be there, in the cold or under the sun, to celebrate your effort. Their compensation? Your exhausted smile, your grateful gaze, the feeling of being part of something bigger. That medal you’re clutching is precious, of course. But their smile, as they hand it to you, is infinitely more so.
A Day in the Life of a Volunteer
While your alarm is going off and you’re beginning the sacred ritual of the pre-race breakfast, somewhere else in the city, people have been up for a while. They are the volunteers. They’re meeting in a deserted parking lot while it’s still dark, with condensation coming from their mouths and a hot coffee in a thermos.
They aren’t wearing the latest trendy tech gear, but yellow or orange vests. They aren’t loading a race plan onto their GPS, but cases of water, bananas, and barricades. They are the ones setting up gazebos when their fingers are still numb from the cold, arranging hundreds of cups in neat rows with the patience of a Buddhist monk, ensuring the course is safe and marked. They are the background noise of our passion, the orchestra tuning its instruments long before the conductor (the announcer) kicks off the show.
“That Cup of Water Saved My Life”: Your Stories
Every one of us has an anecdote. There are those, like me, who still remember the face of an elderly man who, at the 35th kilometer of a marathon run under a brutal sun, handed him a cup of water that tasted like the best in the world. A gesture that, in that moment, was worth more than any energy gel.
There’s the story of a friend who, crippled by cramps and on the verge of quitting, was literally pushed to start again by a group of volunteers who started chanting his name, read from his bib, as if he were an Olympic champion. And there are those who simply hold in their hearts the memory of a look, of a “Come on, you’re almost there!”—simple words that, when you’re in the depths of a crisis, have the power to bring you back to life.
That cup of water is never just water. It’s encouragement, it’s empathy, it’s an unwritten pact between those who run and those who make it possible for them to do so.
Why Volunteering Is a Different Way to Live (and Love) Running
We might think that volunteering is a sort of fallback for those who can’t run. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an active choice, a way to inhabit your passion from another, perhaps even deeper, perspective.
It’s seeing the race in its entirety: not just your own struggle, but that of thousands of others. It’s capturing the essence of determination on the face of the first finisher and the pure joy in the eyes of the last. It’s giving back some of the energy you’ve received in so many other races. To volunteer means to be a guardian of the spirit of running—the spirit that has nothing to do with a stopwatch but everything to do with sharing a piece of the road, both literally and metaphorically.
A “Thank You” That’s Worth More Than a Personal Best
So, the next time you’re in a race, try doing one thing. As you grab that cup on the fly, look up. Meet the eyes of the person handing it to you. A nod of the head, a breathless “thank you,” is all it takes. It’s a tiny gesture that won’t cost you a single second on your final time, but for that person, it means everything.
Because behind every one of our personal records, behind every medal hanging on the wall, there is the time, passion, and generosity of dozens of people who chose to be there for us. And acknowledging that, thanking them, is the most authentic way to honor not only their effort, but our own as well.