No, I didn't walk it ... but I was one of over a thousand volunteers needed to make the event a success. This was my seventh year volunteering for this event and over that time I have seen it grow from around 250 teams to the 750 teams that it is now.
Friday I was Assistant Checkpoint Coordinator for Checkpoint 4 at Olinda for the opening shift. This checkpoint is 45 km from the start and the first team, travelling under the strange name of "Phil lost his insulin pen", came through in about 4 hours and 45 minutes. This was a very quick time and although it looked like a new record was possible, the team eventually finished in 11 hours and 42 minutes. The surprise was Yelttum Maet who started with the second group of teams 90 minutes later. Their elapsed time to Checkpoint 4 was only 4 hours and 15 minutes and they finished first in a new record time of 10 hours and 23 minutes.
My shift at the checkpoint was rather uneventful. Almost all the volunteers at the were corporate volunteers from the law firm Middletons. They were a good crew who were committed to making the day work (I have seen corporate volunteers in the past that didn't really care). Mel, who was coordinating the Middletons crew, was also the Checkpoint Coordinator. She wasn't really comfortable in the role because she had only been Parking Coordinator before. In the end I really ran the Checkpoint while Mel ran the parking so everything worked out well in the end.
Saturday I was Checkpoint Coordinator for Checkpoint 6 at Worri Yallock for the closing shift. As the weather had been good, the teams had been making good progress so I didn't expect there would be too many teams to deal with. So after a very pleasant drive along a nice MX-5 road (Kilara Road) through Gruyere, I arrived to find that all teams had arrived at Checkpoint 6. On checking we found that we only had three teams at the checkpoint (two were still there even though they had been checked out). They were all on their way by 4:30, more that 5 hours before the checkpoint was due to close, so it was time to start packing up. We were all done by about 7 and after we got the Sweep Team on their way by 8, it was time to go home.
So that is it, Trailwalker is over for another year for me. I really enjoy helping making a great event happen and I will be back again next year ... volunteering of course.
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