Volunteering at the Race for the Cure

Today, I volunteered again for the Race for the Cure in downtown Salt Lake.  This year it moved to

Library Square

because it outgrew the Gateway, where it had been the last year. As I ate breakfast at McDonald’s in the City Creek Center, I thought about what got me started in as a race volunteer.  My first experience as a race volunteer was the Salt Lake Classic in Liberty Park. I was employed at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Utah and decided to get involved after hearing a ward member tell me what a good time she had when her family helped out a race that Blue Cross sponsored. Her dad worked in marketing at the time. Volunteering led to helping out at the Olympics in 2002 and eventually the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. I started volunteering at the RFTC after I started working for the University of Utah. By then the Salt Lake Classic was a thing of the past and I was looking for some service to do. Cheering on the marathon runners during the Salt Lake Marathon just wasn’t enough.

When I volunteered for the Salt Lake Classic, I usually worked in the refreshment area or the finish line, but when I walked the race, I either helped out with registration or pre-race activities. One year I helped out with post activity race. I stopped volunteering for the Classic when Blue Cross decided to help with the RFTC. But I never signed up for Team Regence (Blue Cross became Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield of Utah in the late nineties.) because volunteering met working during the race. My volunteering for the race involved raising funds for the Race for the Cure. When I started volunteering my time to RFTC, I worked in Team Packet pickup and the next week in registration. Then I became a regular in t-shirt pick up.

For the first time volunteering, I had to have a background check. Not because the venue had changed, but because I worked in Donations. There were only two of us working under a sign that read “Registration” and we both had to wear hot pink plastic paper bracelets, signifying we were okay to handle money. Our tent wasn’t set up due the rental company being late in delivering the tents, table and such. We never got our chairs, but I still had good time.

When I got done, I did the usual shopping for RFTC merchandise. I enjoy giving little things to my nieces who are related to survivors. Most of my nieces have participated in a Race for the Cure, even Bella, who rode in her stroller the whole 3.1 miles as very young toddler.