Volunteered at Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

Although the nice middle-age English lady who pretty much manages Gainesville's free weekly Saturday morning 5K (3.1 mile) run/walk suggests that participants do approximately a 4:1 ratio of runs to volunteering at the event, I think most of them don't even remotely meet this request.  And then there are a few who see volunteering as their primary fulfillment.  I say good for all of them, but to me volunteering is sheer drudgery, involving me to be stuck around people I frankly dislike (although there are some really sweet, charming ones as well) and who I feel marginalize me and are obsessed with where they stand on the social pecking order.  Well, I got through it, having volunteered this time around because "my" race is tomorrow morning's Tom Walker Half Marathon.  It's hosted by the Florida Track Club and is held every November (except for pandemics and nuclear holocausts) on the Hawthorne Trail, starting and ending at Boulware Springs Park in southeast Gainesville.  This will be my fifth time running this event...the first two took place with temperatures in the shivering thirties while last year's, a debacle in which I had to walk the final three miles, was in unseasonably sweltering heat and humidity. Tomorrow it will be a little bit cooler, but still unpleasant.  During the race I'm planning to alternate five-minute runs with minute-long fast walks, to be repeated throughout the race...should be interesting to see how it goes.  In any event, I'm looking forward to it...and NOT forward to volunteering again: will I ever learn...