Our First Triathlon (Technically! We Were Volunteers)

More and more in the last several months, I have felt impressed to find ways to give service in my community. Serving others is not something that comes naturally to me; too often I am content to sit on my bottom, goofing off on the Internet or otherwise wasting time. At other times, I get so wrapped up in my own life that I fail to look around me at the needs of others. But with all my kids soon to be in school all day, I am trying to get myself into a more service-oriented frame of mind. This is also an attitude I want to pass along to my children, so they can find joy in helping others even while they are young.

Luckily, I am surrounded by many inspiring, awesome, service-oriented men and women, and many of them are a great source for service ideas! Cindy, a friend in my LDS ward, introduced me to a great new website, JustServe.org. Though the website is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is not gospel-centered. JustServe.org is a networking tool, created to help people find local community service opportunities. Users need only register with the site (for free), and then they can search the site for information about service needs in their area. The listings include job descriptions and contact information. Although JustServe.org is new in our area of the United States (the Tucson version of the website just went active earlier this year), I am very excited to use it in the future and hope I can make a habit of searching it regularly for opportunities to serve my community.

As luck would have it, we got our first opportunity very soon after registering. Now that I play volleyball in the church every week or so, I have had the chance to meet a lot of new people in our church...including many people of a more "athletic" persuasion than myself. One of these people is Kate Anderson, a sweet, spunky, friendly, enthusiastic, very athletic lady in our LDS stake. She plays volleyball several times a month, and runs triathlons for fun. She's one of those people. Plus, she's expecting her fifth kid, so you could say she's pretty busy. On top of all that, though, she makes her living as a race organizer; she spends a ton of time organizing, coordinating, and supervising races of all types throughout the Tucson area. She is at an event on most Saturdays of the year. I don't know where she finds the energy or time!

Anyway, this spring, Kate managed to organized an Olympic triathlon right here in Sahuarita. And she needed a lot of people to help out. So, due to her prompting (combined with seeing the race listed on JustServe.org), I agreed to be a volunteer at the triathlon! Better yet, I was able to convince my two older daughters to help out as well. I was excited to get more family members involved.

We weren't able to help with the set-up the night before; instead, we were put in charge of a water station in the middle on the day of the triathlon. However, the girls really wanted to see the athletes in action before that, so we woke up extra early and rode our bikes down to Sahuarita Lake, where the first leg of the triathlon had just gotten under way:

Lorelai and Celeste were terribly impressed by (and jealous of) the swimmers in the lake. Most of the time, swimmers aren't allowed in the lake, but an exception was made for the triathlon. Personally, I would never want to swim in the lake...yikes! I'd be too afraid of getting bitten by fish or coated with green muck. But I guess that's why these athletes are better human beings than I'll ever be...they're not afraid of a little lake muck.

After watching the swimmers for a little while, we biked over to the starting line and received our volunteer shirts, as well as our assignments. The girls were very impressed by the bright yellow shirts; they felt very "official." They also snuck an opportunity to watch the beginning of the cycling leg of the triathlon.

Overall, the atmosphere at the starting line was very positive and exciting, and the girls fed off that energy. After receiving a few more instructions, we all rode our bikes a few miles north to the Santa Cruz Park. See? Even though we weren't actually racing in the triathlon, we still got a nice workout from riding our bikes up and down the neighborhood!

We set up our water stand just outside the park, adjacent to the pecan orchards. Another volunteer, Kali, was there with her daughters, so it was quite the family affair.

At our station, we handed out cups with water and Gatorade, as well as some small "energy gel-packs." Most racers didn't take the gel packs because they were drawing near the end of the triathlon and knew the energy boost would come to them too late (our station was located about halfway through the 3.1-mile run). The girls (and later, a few boy volunteers) were very eager to hand everything out, and had a lot of fun doing it, while cheering on all the racers!

After a while, the crowd thinned out. It was obvious most of the racers had already passed by, and it was starting to get hot. Naturally, that meant my girls started to get a little whiny and distracted. Celeste only wanted to sit and pout. Lorelai kept jumping on her bike and racing off to corners of the soccer field without warning, then returning a few minutes later. I was getting a little frustrated at their flightiness, but I had to remind myself that they had already done much to help, and they were hot and tired from all the bike-riding earlier.

After concluding that no more racers were coming, Kali and her children departed. Just a few minutes later, the girls and I followed their lead. We pedaled our bikes home (luckily we only live a few minutes from the park; Celeste was pretty wiped out by this point!), and then drove to the clubhouse for a volunteer pancake breakfast. By the time we got there, almost all the pancakes were gone. I think I may have snagged the very last one (I shared it with my kids).

Celeste was so cranky by this point that she even refused to eat; she sat there and cried loudly while Lorelai and I celebrated our morning of service with a delicious breakfast. Poor Celeste; she usually has a pretty even temper, but when her patience runs out, she really loses control. Right after this, I took both girls home and made them shower and change into comfortable clothes, which cheered them up right away.

Despite tiring out towards the end, we still had a good time and I was grateful for the opportunity to help a friend and serve in the community at the same time. Plus, it was inspiring to watch the triathletes; it almost persuaded me to try out a triathlon in the future (but a sprint-sized triathlon, not an Olympic-sized one. I'm not totally crazy). I admired how fit all the athletes were, and how focused they were on achieving their goal. I hope I can find the same focus for myself in the coming months. I am glad my girls enjoyed the experience as well, and I hope to do something like this with them again soon. Time to bookmark JustServe.org on my web browser and check it frequently!