On behalf of the Big Island International Marathon and me, personally, I want to thank all of our volunteers for going above and beyond the call of duty this weekend in the blustery, rain-soaked event that ended with rainbows, but started kind of hard.
On behalf of the Big Island International Marathon and me, personally, I want to thank all of our volunteers for going above and beyond the call of duty this weekend in the blustery, rain-soaked event that ended with rainbows, but started kind of hard.
On Saturday night, as our canopies were literally destroyed by the high winds, we were outside with volunteers saving all the food and supplies. It crossed our minds to cancel the annual event, but Wayne Joseph’s voice kept saying “Run the race! It’s only a little wet.” (Joseph, who died last year, was the longtime race director.)
Sunday morning, all of the volunteers showed up in the dark, without being called, with smiles on their faces in the midst of a hurricane-like storm. And they went right to work fixing and setting up everything, with no complaints.
In my eyes, they are the best team a race director could have.
We had 1,038 entries in the three races and 500 volunteers stationed all along the courses. Without them, we would have been lost.
So, my thanks goes out to the volunteers, as they were the heroes of the day.
Mahalo,
Bob Wedeman
Big Island International Marathon race director