Volunteering

The night started off wet, very wet! By the time I'd got to Inverleith Park there was torrential rain. It got better, got worse, got worse still. As we donned our plastic macs to head to the bus to be taken to our zone it poured down. By the time we'd walked the mile of our route, positioning the marshals, my map was in pieces.

Thankfully it started to get better and then proceeded to just drizzle for most of the night. As team leader, I wasn't happy to leave one of my marshals in a position on their own so when the lead bikes came through and said the route was unclear further down the course, I braved the city centre drunks to marshal on my own. The worst I came across was one guy who stole my rubbish bag and then threw the contents along the street. There were also some lovely drunks out who fully appreciated the work we were doing and even helped me calm some guys down who were very offended that there wasn't a marathon for testicular or prostate cancer.

Once all the walkers were through our zone we got our lift back to the Moonwalk City. 4am and I could have signed off for the night. As the first bus didn't leave until 6am I thought I'd see if they needed any extra help. It seemed I arrived at the perfect time. They had no marshals at the water point in zone 24. My couple of hours extra turned in to nearly 5 as new recruits were dropped off without a team leader and as I was dressed in Team Leader gear rather than standard volunteer gear, I suddenly was the person they came to for help. Well, I couldn't then head home until another team leader showed up.

Thankfully I managed a couple of hours sleep before heading out to the BFS AGM.