Volunteers Help Make ‘Live United’ Day Successful
'Live United 5K' participants take off at 9 am from the William Penn PAC
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The threat of rain had pretty much disappeared since Mother Nature soaked the area the night before, leaving a cool damp morning for the runners to look forward to.
The amount of runners was uncertain just an hour before the start of the ‘Live United 5K’ run was scheduled to start. Executive Director Brianne Fitzgerald was guessing like everyone else about how runner participation would turn out. “I don’t know how many runners we’re going to have because of the weather. It could be a lot, because now it’s not raining and some people like to run in the cool weather, or our numbers could drop a little bit because people don’t want to run in the cool weather. Unfortunately with this crazy weather pattern we’ve been having, I was hoping it’d be great, and sunny, and 80 degrees. We got the opposite morning, but everyone seems to be in good spirits.
As of Friday, there had been about 100 people registered for the race, 90 runners ended up taking on the challenge.
Fitzgerald said that the event planning “has been going very, very well.”
The kids races were new this year. These races were held on the indoor track at the PAC. Fitzgerald said this gave some of Oskaloosa’s younger residents a chance to participate as well, without the possible intimidation factor of running with adults. There were 4 different races, broken up by age group.
The event would be difficult without the volunteers. Oskaloosa is known for its strong group of volunteers, and around 90 volunteers took time out of their Saturday to help make a difference in their community. “It really does take about that many people to make sure we have a successful event,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s too many elements involved not to have that many people.”
The sponsor dollars generated are spent solely on event, Fitzgerald explained. “It’s not a profit opportunity. It’s literally just an awareness event for the nonprofits in the community so people know exactly what they [nonprofits] are doing and for people to have fun, be healthy, get out to run, play with their kids, be active and spend time as a family.”
In closing, Fitzgerald stated, “We always just want to thank everyone who comes out, it’s just amazing. We want to thank all of our volunteers for the time they spend. Without them we couldn’t do this. We want to thank everyone for coming out and spending time with their families.”
