The home straight

The final weekend, meant a replacement bus service for a couple of stops before picking up the train into London and then the tube across to Stratford, then a repeat on the way home. All times slightly changed, but all part of the London experience.
We were very lucky to have been given an oyster card for travel and as my total travel costs were in excess of £130 the travel card was very welcome. I know many other volunteers also appreciated the help towards the travel costs, some like me having longer journeys and many shifts and others with shorter journeys or few shifts. Many people still don't realise that as a volunteer, we pay for everything as a rule, so anything we are offered as part of our daily experience is always very welcome.
In this case we had Travel, food, uniform, and the occasional thank you gift in appreciation, though most of us just do it as we love being involved and gaining the once in a lifetime experience. Plus of course that all important support for the athletes and giving everyone a memorable experience.

It was a little busier for the final weekend, as there were many more finals taking place and of course Team GB were starting to pack up for the journey home themselves with the athletes too starting to leave for their own journey home. Such a shame not to have been able to get a team photo, but my memories will last forever of meeting such a great bunch of people.

Each event session meant an update of the medal board outside the Athlete room with each new medal gained and over the weekend we ended with 18 Gold, 8 Silver and 13 Bronze medals. 39 in total, well in excess of the targets they needed to achieve.

I managed to attend a few medal ceremonies, as well as helping to move some of the kit around in readiness for the IAAF championships that follows next month. It is a shame that I won't be able to experience that too, just to see how different the atmosphere is with the elite athletes competing.

It has been lovely working with the Team and all the athletes and a little surreal at times, watching the coverage in the athletes lounge with Maria Lyle, Richard Whitehead, Dave Henson, Kare Adenegan, Hannah Cockroft and others, all screaming and shouting for their team-mates to do well and including me as part of their cheer squad.

To be honest before I started my Team Attache shifts I was aware of the bigger names, but many of the others I didn't know. Now I feel like I know them all so well, which is so lovely, and as I was leaving to go across to the stadium one of the Team Managers presented me with a thank you card from the Team, which was really nice, as I felt I could have done so much more to help, but as a home games they were pretty organised and had most things covered well. I know some of the other Team Attaches had to do a lot of things that the Team GB guys themselves already had sorted. Home advantage definitely meant I had less pressure to sort any issues on my own.

As volunteers we were lucky enough to be offered tickets to the final session, to go and enjoy the atmosphere and for the closing speeches, so leaving my team for the last time (who were all going across to support our final athlete's race) I headed to the stadium.
Sadly with timings being tight, I left before the final medal ceremonies had taken place, so missed out on the thank you to those of us "pretty in pink".
A final session that saw torrential rain at the start and glorious sunshine at the end. A very good analogy of the Para Athletics to be fair. Overcoming adversity and shining through.
The competition over the past 10 days has been awesome. So many different athletes competing in many different classifications, meaning that many athletes were able to experience the cheers and roars of the crowd and the applause and cheers of the medal ceremonies.
The crowds were truly magnificent in their support and all seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of the "superhumans" on the athletics track and in the field events. And even the mascot "Whizzbee" got caught up in the competition.

It's always a great atmosphere for Para Sports, I hope the IAAF Athletics starting in the next couple of weeks gets the same great atmosphere, even if they have fewer events taking place. 47 compared to the 213 events of the Para Games. But there will be more athletes , more heats and almost double the number of countries arriving to compete. London Stratford will be very noisy indeed. I know the Volunteers in Pink will do a brilliant job to make both spectators and athletes welcome.

It has been a truly memorable experience. And all the athletes did us proud, from all teams and all countries.
Though of course I think Team GB were the best (Well I would wouldn't I?)

So now it is back to the day job, a bit of a breather and I am heading off to volunteer at the Special Olympics in a couple of weeks time. A completely different type of role as I am to be at one of the Venues as the Event Services Manager, more new skills to work on. Which all adds to the variety of volunteering and gives me new experiences each time.

Join me for that next volunteer experience.

Hitting the target

Wednesday's shift was a late one, starting at 1pm.
Another quiet day at the office.
No morning session meant there wasn't much activity until later in the day when half a dozen athletes were competing, so headed across to the Hero Village to watch a few medal ceremonies. Sadly no GB athletes in this session, so was cheering for my fellow Team Attache friends' teams of USA and Ireland, and was delighted to be able to get a photo with Jason Smyth, The Irish Gold medal sprinter.

On Thursday I headed home for the day, my 2nd day off out of the 2 weeks, and it was far quicker to travel the distance from where I am staying to get home, than to travel by train into London and across to Stratford, yet to home is about twice the distance. Mind you the train journey to Stratford does require a lot less effort.

In my absence the Team won  2 Bronzes on Wednesday evening and 2 Gold, 1 Silver and 4 Bronze on Thursday. (How dare they? 😉 )
My next shift on Friday started off fairly quiet, so I was able to head across to the medal plaza and see all those 'Thursday won medals' being presented.
What a great couple of hours that was, and I managed to get a few pictures with some of the athletes I have been working with for the past, nearly 2, weeks.

As I write this, we have won another Gold with Kadeena Cox gaining a medal at the Friday evening session, so we now have 14 Gold, 3 Silver and 13 Bronze in total, 3rd in the table behind China and the USA.
Whoop Whoop
2 more shifts remaining until the games end. How many more can we achieve before then? There are 4 more sessions, but some are heats, though still loads of finals to come.
Go Team GB.

It's been an awesome couple of weeks working with the athletes, The final weekend is going to be busy as the final events take place. I'm pretty sure the team have already met their medal targets, so bring on the fun for those that are still competing. This team are bloomin' awesome and how great to have been part of it.

Medals and More

Well the competition seems to be going well. Team GB (My Team 😍) are doing well, though I am not sure how they are doing compared to the targets they have been set to achieve. But I am very proud of all of those that have been competing. Each day I get to know them a little more and chat with different athletes and feel like a proud Mum when they do well.

11 Gold, 2 Silver and 7 Bronze at end of play on Monday seems a good haul to me.

Sunday and Monday have been very different days, I have walked through Stratford Centre to find a post box (to actually post something, not just for fun) and spotted the "Meridian Line", that runs through from Greenwich.
(I was very excited about this)

Headed off to meet another athlete at St Pancras and escorted them back as well as meeting one at Stratford and bringing his equipment back to the hotel. Then filling in with any odd jobs needed, topping up the Athetes' room water and yogurt supplies.

Team GB management and coaches are a very well oiled machine, so most everything is covered, though with so many winning medals, I was sent across to one ceremony to accompany Olivia Breen collecting her gold for Long Jump. She was so excited and didn't stop talking and smiling all the way.

Had then to accompany one of the athletes (Isaac Towers) across to the warm up track ready for his race later in the evening, which sadly I didn't get to watch, and I think he came 7th, which was brilliant as he has a long future ahead of him.

Another of the athletes Andrew Small, who had won a bronze on Saturday at the session we had been to, also came over to the Stadium, and he was keen to buy some programmes so we wandered off to find some and then headed into the stadium to watch some of the races and we spent time chatting about the events and how he was getting on with his competing. A great companion for predicting the race results as he was very aware of all their abilities, though in any race it's always what happens on the night, and some of the races seem to be taking place so late, I'd be half asleep, not sure about having energy to compete.


During the day though I did bump into so many volunteers I knew, which was great fun, though was quite a hot and humid day for competing, with any luck it will be cooling down a little for the next few days.

I am now looking forward to seeing what the next few days have in store. (Though it seems to be going really quickly).
There's still plenty of competition to go and each day means I get to see more of how the behind the scenes stuff works.
Its a great way to spend my "holiday" and I feel very privileged to be involved.

So let Tuesday begin....
Catch you soon

Time for a break

5 days of shifts come to an end and there is a day of rest (though it isn't a Sunday) and I have been lucky enough to get tickets for the Saturday evening athletics, so off to the QEOP yet again this time to spectate and see if I can spot my Team GB athletes taking part and winning medals. I know the team have targets to achieve, it all goes hand in hand with the funding.
I do feel very invested in these athletes already having worked with them for the past week and it does make the spectating experience that much more pleasurable and exciting.

I was very lucky to be able to get into the Stadium at the end of shift on Friday night to see Hannah Cockroft break the world record at 100m and win a World Gold, with Kare Adenegan taking the Silver. Lots of whooping and hollering ensued, naturally. And also, over on the Club Throw Gemma Prescott picked up a Bronze in her category.

So a full set of colours on the first evening and many more opportunities to come.

So what's been happening over the past few days? Well I have been furniture removing and reorganising to make the athletes lounge more homely, unloading water and yogurts and rice pots into the athletes room and fridge (well freezer, as there was no fridge available, so have to keep checking it's not frozen).
Had to take a stroll across to another hotel in Stratford to pick up a package delivered there by mistake, luckily I knew where it was, so was a race against the clock to see how quickly I could be there and back. (Little things).

Spend an hour or two sorting out games tickets to be allocated to team staff for both the Para and the IAAF Championships, and putting special Para Games tags into rucksacks for the athletes to collect as a gift from Asics. Not sure all of them were keen to have them with the pink on though.

We've had luggage deliveries (for the athletes) to allocate to their rooms before they arrived, we've sorted their competition bibs ready for them to add to their vests etc, and each athlete has been given a hand stitched GB flag, with a message included from a member of the public, wishing them well and good luck.

A second trip across to St Pancras on the Javelin and more athletes collected, plus had an emergency dash in a "uber" across to Lee Valley Athletic Track to deliver a left behind "blade" for a competing athlete. Amazingly some of the roads are still the same as when I drove in the Paralympics in 2012 and I was telling the driver all about it and what was where back then. Ah the memories.

In between all that I managed to get across to the Uniform Collection centre for the remainder of my kit, which surprisingly actually fit quite nicely. And also headed to workforce check-in to find out what gifts we would be getting, (more out of curiosity than anything as other volunteers had been speaking about them) and they ended up giving us the lot and marking our cards for it, so we don't end up getting doubles. Now to try setting up the pedometer as I am sure we are well over our 10000 a day.

After shift heading across to the track we bumped into no other than Dave Moorcroft and a few others from the Join In team, so managed a few minutes chat. Time for a quick selfie, and then we were off. (Borrowed this pic from Mary as mine was rubbish, though I really wish I'd kept my sunglasses on for the piccie)

Catch you soon :-)

Two days in

Well, a gentle start to the volunteer experience, my Team Manager suggested that the afternoon would be a good start time, so I managed to schedule in my uniform collection beforehand to get my accreditation, Shoes(&socks) and Volunteer t-shirts, plus hat and a travel card to help towards our costs of getting to and from shifts (very welcome support).

The afternoon was spent helping to set up the Team recovery room, which is alongside the warm up track. The room itself needed a lot of clearing first as had become a dumping group for a lot of the equipment, but by the time we left it was looking more like you could relax in it. (We did manage to fill another room with the stuff we moved, will be interesting to find out if that room too needed to be cleared eventually, I may find out at some point later in the proceedings)

We then headed back to the "office base" to start sorting the welcome packs for the Team Athletes arriving during the day on Tuesday. It was a case of matching the accreditation with an information sheet and putting them into envelopes ready for collection. Didn't quite get to finish as some laminating was required, which meant having to go to an off site office to get done.

Was back in the morning to finish off, and then sort out those arriving today so we could add room keys and hand them out when they got here.


This task got interrupted by the arrival of luggage from some of the athletes that had been out training in Paris, naturally as we brought them in I had to organise them into alphabetical order, which made it so much easier to find later.

Then a trip on the Javelin High Speed rail link from Stratford across to St Pancras to meet and greet the athletes coming from Paris who were travelling by Eurostar. We then herded them back onto the Javelin and headed them back to the athletes lounge at the hotel, while Amanda the Team Manager headed off to try and get the rooms sorted.

By the time my shift finished we had matched most of the athletes with both rooms and luggage. Phew!

We had a visit from Whizzbee the Para Mascot. So just had to get a piccie. He was hovering round for a while to see if he could get piccies with some of the athletes, before Buzzing off to another location.

More athletes arriving tomorrow, and it's a training day for many, so they'll be heading to the training venue to keep themselves honed for when the competition starts.

Who knows what tasks will be on the menu tomorrow, but it's certainly going to be varied.

Right, Buzzing off for now :-)

Whoop Whoop I'm off again

Time to get back to the blog as I'm off volunteering yet again.

This is the first Big event of the year for me, though I have been involved in other one off events and volunteering this year and have others coming up too, this is the first away from home for the year.

5 years on from where it all began in a big way for many, I am heading back to London to volunteer at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and this time I am heading to the World Para Athletics Championships.
 http://www.paraathleticschampionships.com/

I am so lucky to have been chosen to be Team Attache with none other than Team GB, based at their Team Hotel and liaising with the Team Manager to make sure the athletes don't have to worry about the little things and can get on with their competing. How awesome is that? Mind you, at this point in time I have absolutely no idea what that will entail as every athletics meeting is different and will have different challenges that need to be met. I expect to be heading home at the end of each shift exhausted but happy to have made an athlete's day a little easier.

Every time I volunteer I learn so many new things and meet so many great people. I'm just very lucky to have been able to do so much and feel I've come a long way in the past 5 years since London 2012.

One thing about volunteering at big events, is knowing that behind the scenes everyone is working away furiously trying to iron out any issues that crop up, and I have yet to be involved in something that hasn't had issues to start with, yet the athletes and the public usually only see the polished article.
If the Games are a success publicly, then any hassles behind the scenes are well worth having gone through.

As for our uniform, well this time we have a glamorous pink to show off, so I'm trying to work out what hair bands will coordinate and whether I have time to paint my nails in different colours without them chipping almost immediately. First world problems eh?

So now to the packing list.... Luckily with a uniform provided I don't need to think of much else.

First shift is Monday afternoon before the teams arrive, so I expect to be kept on my toes with pre-arrival preparations. Team GB is one of the larger teams, so let's hope they don't all need support at the same time, that could indeed be challenging.

Will update once I have settled into my role.
London here we come