..when you don’t RUN

As a runner...

When you run, you run

When you don’t run, you volunteer...

So what better way to celebrate freedom than helping others run wild and free, well not exactly wild, but we did aid them to run free, by volunteering at the 12 hours Mumbai Ultra.

Knowing that your presence, your service, aided runners in this run, is a blessed feeling. And there lies the crux of the matter, the reason, albeit a kind of selfish one, for volunteering. A runner, running for 12 hours, in Mumbai’s humidity, and did I mention the heat factor, is always going to be grateful for all the support they can get, and a grateful runner is always going to mutter some blessings (hopefully not the shaadiwala or the bacche wala) either in their mind, or say it out loud, and let’s face it, we all can do with some blessings.

So you spend most of the day jumping, screaming, cheering, clapping, even doing a couple of salsa steps, posing, clicking runners as they reach the hydration station. You do it all with a child like glee, with fullto enthusiasm, which can be infectious .

The team does not need to be told what to do, they know what needs to be done, call it the experience of volunteering at the monthly Bandra-NCPA. So they are cutting bananas, watermelons, nimboos, mixing and preparing enerzal, breaking chikkis, refilling glasses and bottles. And their enthusiasm has reached a level where they no longer waiting for the runner to reach station but running to the runners, with the phoos phoos (which is a blessing in the afternoon heat) and even giving a couple of runners a bath. With plates of watermelons and dates, and glasses of water and enerzal, they gleefully calling out to runners, pani le lo, enerzal le lo, watermelons le lo, and even dates with Sandeep (English sure is a punny language). Insisting runners take the water and enerzal, not waiting for them to say what they want, insisting that they hydrate. Helping struggling runners make it to the physio, even insisting that they stretch, spraying their sore feet. 

As the day wore on and noon gave way to evening, the stream of runner became a trickle. You admire the perseverance of those who still continue to trudge to the hydration station. But this doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm, which seems to be at the same level as it was earlier. By now you have onlookers, some trying to make away with some food, some standing wondering what a pampered crazy lot these runners are. Well that goes without saying, we volunteers are one crazy lot, and thanks to the organisers we were able to pamper the runners, with some even quipping that with all the pampering they actually managed to put on a kg instead of loosing it.

Finally it’s time to close the water station, to pack up and transport all that’s left behind. The delicious kichidi and dahi bath have been eaten, its time to shut shop move out. The runners (at least those who are still running) have been instructed to take a u-turn at the Charlie water station (ah yes, we were the delta, though I wish we were blue). But not before we said our thank you and clicked the customary volunteers pic, did we finally closed the station. It was time to call a cab and sink in to its air conditioned confines, to catch a quick shut eye before you reach your destination, grateful for the events of the day.

P.S. Would really like to thank all the volunteers, not just at our hydration station, but all the other stations, for giving us their precious time and doing an awesome job at it. Thank you to the organisers who for giving us the opportunity to serve and support our fellow runners.