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.