Volunteering at the Pikes Peek 10k Race

Ruichen Feng, 7th grader ,

April 21, 2024

It’s the second year since I joined Capital Youth Outreach Club( CYOC), which I am very proud of because we are a group of young people that serve our community. This time, as a CYOC memeber, I am helping with the 2024 10K race happening in our region. It was a chilly morning at Pike and Rose as me and my dad drove into the parking garage. As I was walking with him, I saw a big sign that said “Pikes Peek 10k” (It was spelled “peek”, I don’t know if that was intentional or not), which was the name of the race I volunteered for today. 

After signing in and receiving my t-shirt, I was able to help a little bit with setting up tables and carrying water. After that, Someone who was leading the volunteers told me to help with the gatorade and water station that was in a parking lot nearby. I saw many different tents at the parking lot, advertising gyms, restaurants, etc. We then started to pour the cups of water and gatorade, which I found more stressful than I thought, trying not to knock over the other cups and potentially make a gatorade tsunami. After finally finishing preparations, the race started. Although I couldn’t see the runners cross the finish line,I could hear the audience cheering as the first few people started arriving at the food and water tables. There was surprisingly a very large amount of people, and even toddlers attending the race. Later, when the runners had mostly left, we started to pack up. I helped fold and clean the tables and also dump the rest of our leftover gatorade and water into drains, which I felt a little wasteful about. Finally, after we finished cleaning up our station, we signed out. 

As we headed back to our car in the parking garage. I thought about how much of an important part of the race me and the other volunteers were. Without us, the runners would probably be very thirsty afterwards and maybe even get sick because of the temperature. In conclusion, volunteering at the Pikes Peek 10k race was a very enjoyable experience. I got to meet amazing people, help others, and maybe even take a cookie or two from the food tables.