Scanning with Death at parkrun

My local parkrun were desperate for volunteers again, so I stepped up even though I would prefer to run. It had been raining again, but was not too bad as I walked down there. I had hoped a couple of friends would come along to at least watch, but they could not make it.

I was allocated barcode scanning. The last time I did this was during a horrible storm when they still used little dedicated barcode scanners. Those could be fiddly to use and people would turn up with a soggy piece of paper with their code. These days you just use the parkrun app which is also used for timekeeping.

One of the guys dressed up for Halloween. He was waving to people as they passed the finish area.

There are a great crowd of people who help out. Alan in the mobility scooter and his wife have been coming all year just to help out. The lad on the right is volunteering as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award. A lot of the others would normally run, but it seems to be the same people helping out most of the time. At the finish there is not much to do apart from cheer people on until they complete the run.

There were some big puddles on the course today and the mud is starting to build up, but a lot of it is not too bad really. There was a guy who seemed to lead the whole race and he finished well ahead of anyone else. We were there for a lot longer as some were walking it. We just had a few drops of rain.

The scanning app worked very well. It coped with barcodes on wristbands, phones and even on smartwatches. I had no issues scanning everyone who came to me.

You just have to get the barcode into view and it gets marked in red as soon as it is read with the numbers appearing in the list. There were three of us scanning to cope with when it gets busy. It must be more frantic on big events, but we only had ninety participants today.

We have been lucky with the weather so far, but that cannot continue forever. I will still try to get down there even if it rains. I hope to be running again next week. I have clocked up seventy runs and fourteen volunteer sessions, so that is a five to one ration which I think is reasonable. I should qualify for the respective one hundred and twenty five shirts some time next year.

Run free!