hello and welcome to got to run with well i'm gail kislev events and i will be your host for this segment today my very special guest is mary haskins mary thanks so much for hosting inviting me today well i'm glad you're here we're going to have a lot of fun we will and we do and we do let me tell you a little bit about mary she is the manager of volunteer operations at new york road runners she's also a coach for the new york road runners marathon charity team team for kids which is a group of adult runners who raise money for our youth programs and she also is a coach for the group training at new york road runners so i think we all agree miry likes to run i have the pleasure of working with mary at new york road runners we sat right next to each other got into a lot of trouble had a lot of fun and it was just a hoot to come in every day and have mary there mary has an effervescence that just attracts people and it's a very welcoming quality that she has mar done a lot of races together but in particular we just celebrated something very special didn't remarry we did we did after a few years of working towards this goal we both got our app at six dar marathon major medal in tokyo there's a pattern march and do you have that metal with us the big reveal here it is and this too is achievable for anybody you have a life time to do it and our journey was a lot of fun it was a lot of fun yet a lot of fun was especially fun going to tokyo where i had never travel that distance before with you  crossing the finish line and being greeted by some of our new york road runner senior staff yeah who gave us our medals up but that was especially exciting i would encourage anyone to go after it because it's very achievable so we're going to learn a little bit about more about mary she wasn't always a runner she spent twenty years in the commodities trading business what was that like well the commodities trading business has changed dramatically since i was involved right out of college i started on the floor of the new york mercantile exchange so that was back when open outcry trading was the way that this kind of business got done it's now of course gone electronic but i spent  years on the floor in the pits as we call them and it was a marathon every day never a dull moment very exciting and highs and lows you know there was a lot of stress associated with it but coming to running was one of my ways of coping with that family stress and did you meet someone special on the floor yeah i did meet my husband harry marathons he's run with team for kids frequently and keep coming back year after year for the marathon even though every year he says this is my last one now we are so since running the marathon was like being in the pit tell us about why and when you started running in the mid ninety's i was in my mid thirty's at the time then i was active but had never really run more than a five k a friend on a dare said oh let's run a marathon together at the time i had a young family two year old baby a high pressure job and i was trying to spend as much time with my mom who was suffering from terminal cancer but i knew i really needed some something some kind of a program something that i could do daily to help relieve stress so again i back in the old days in the ninety's i threw my name into the marathon drawing at the time knew were this well so he wou go to central park and stand in line to get the application then fill out the application and had two male gay guys that really needed a postmark that the organization you know communicated to the was exciting and i have to say marathon day was of course one of the most glorious days of my life crossing the finish line but the training and the journey to get there i think was more satisfying in the  end of course i had a young family i was concerned that i would disrupt you know what was going on and i'm a morning person so it was just easy to get up at five am get out there to do my training when i come home everyone was still sleeping so i didn't impact anybody but i took really good care of myself and did you train alone did you know what you were doing i got a plan like on line train plan and i followed it like a recipe to the tee i think it was the st time in my life where i opened a textbook on page one and read every word of every page and till i got to the end which was central park and tavern on the green in the marathon finish line and again like i said i didn't know what i was doing but i figured i'd just follow this plan and i didn't stray at all and i was just very fortunate to not suffer any injury during the training just lucky that way you are you were born to be a runner really not that i'm talented but i think i'm bio mechanically designed to to sort of stave off any injury i've been lucky to not been knocked out from running and running marathons and ultras which is one of your do and with some success i've run of a number of altars fifty k fifty mile and i just love this stage race that i've embraced i've done it seven times it's called the trans rockies run and it is a running camping experience just like the event is nd to none in terms of the support that you get from the organization it's a run cation so you need to  and it's a six day event you cover one hundred and twenty miles over the course of the of the six days every day is a different point to point and you are never below nine thousand feet of elevation so it's very very challenging the elevation piece i think is probably the most challenging for someone who lives and trains at sea level but it's very doable because you never you you run you are twenty to twenty five miles a day and then you have the rest of the day to relax stretch get in the sleep eat eat for and there's always an icy stream at the finish line so you just get your ice bath i love years of you running that race and the community is you know i when i got as a stranger i've gone with a friend i've done it different ways every year over the years that i've run it and every years different there are the old friends that you remember from years past and you make new ones every time and after five or six days these are all your new five hundred dollars or so best friends well that's one of the things that we love about the running community it's it's so welcoming and we got our lists of what race you do you walk away with a new friend absolutely loved yes so having run all of these marathons and your own choices you must have had a great appreciation for the volunteers well we couldn't do our events at new york road runners without our volunteer family and of course when i myself go out and run races elsewhere it's just it's amazing the volunteers step up and make it all happen i am so i feel blessed to be a part of the volunteer operations team and it is a team that it takes a team effort we are a team of three and we work in the events department and our team is responsible for the recruitment the communication the training and the race day managing of the twenty two thousand dollars plus volunteers that we engage in and manually wri ten thousand of that number are marathon day or marathon related volunteers because they're also volunteering at the expo and at the pasta dinner and of course on marathon day our course finish it's an amazing operation so you know i stand on the shoulders of volunteer managers before me who built it and we just continue to grow it we have a very robust volunteer leadership program and so you train them we do train them two dollars to three hundred dollars volunteers depending on the year join us as volunteer leaders and they act as managers in specific parts of the cause the three of us can't be everywhere although we feel that that you are my position over the last few years has been the volunteer manager at the start of the new york city marathon which i love just that's the one place where fifty thousand dollars runners come together at one time  before we send them off on their amazing twenty six two mile journey it's almost like sending your child off to the st day of kindergarten because everyone's so anxious and they're a loser of this and they keep looking over their shoulders at you like it's going to be ok and you just tell them they're going to make yeah and we have volunteers that are are recruited to do just that to tell the runners where to go where they need to be not to worry if i'm going to be where they can get one emotional support  volunteers and what is so meaningful to me as i get to know the different personalities and and our volunteers come from all backgrounds some are runners many are not and we have  a very strong committed group of what i like to call professional volunteers because i call them pros they have other lives they've got jobs and families and other obligations but they're professional  and they know what they do are doing i've learned a lot from them and volunteers who have been with us for forty years marathon voluntary we get concerned when we know that they're going to have actually retire and how are we going to fill that pipeline with new volunteers coming up which is why are leadership program is so important like your own little family within the family is our clammy and what we try to do because they give so much of their time  try to celebrate them as much as we can we love to give them gifts t shirts and hats and jackets and that kind of thing but we also love to honor them our volunteers who serve with us annually one hundred hours or more we  give them the presidential service award which is a certificate signed by the press didn't of the united states and it comes along with a medal that we have a great debt the run center with their name on it thanking them and we do a luncheon or some some kind of small party for that group so if i were going to volunteer do i get to choose among the many different tasks that i can do and what are those tasks you can choose everything  on a st come st serve basis and i'd like to talk a little bit about that that process so we have a nine plus one program at new york where runners are runners can run  course of the year we offer about sixty or so to choose from and they've fallen they only need to volunteer at one just once that's just so on say and they get a what we call plus one credit for that volunteer service and then they get guaranteed not complimentary entry it's not free but they get guaranteed entry into the following years marathon this is me so this is going to do that exactly who wouldn't do that so this is amazing resource for us in terms of our volunteer pool but what i'd like to suggest to all of those considering the nine plus one program is do your volunteer service early early in the year we do have trouble recruiting in the winter months as you can imagine but but if you come out and volunteer early you check that off and then you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the or you might have so much fun that you might want to come back and check your next job read it do it again and again and again i do remember one day in the office it was november and we got a call to all go to runner services to man the phones because here it was it was one month left right and we were getting all the nine plus one people calling in saying i forgot to shut out if you don't do it early there's always the midnight run not the most popular for volunteers because of course you don't want to be celebrating the new year the most popular the jingle bell jog is a very popular volunteer opportunity race and so are all of the other races that are celebrating a cause the killie's race which we just had this past weekend is also very popular with volunteers and as is the one for you one for youth event because that is a race that celebrates our new rising new york road  one because it has some fringe benefits well it's actually not the bronx ten miler but we do offer for the staten island half that's the one that you're thinking of we offer a volunteer credit and a ra credit the staten island half is difficult for us to recruit volunteers to just because it's distant you have to take the ferry to get over there and people are training for the marathon and they you know that's a big marathon training weekend but what we offer is the plus one credit but also a race credit which means you only need to run eight of our races oh that's quite involved here at one if you volunteer at the staten island again another incentive at the brooklyn half marathon in may we offer a plus one credit and guaranteed non complicated entry entry into the following brooklyn half so the brooklyn half is a st come  serve race in terms of race registration for runners and if fills up quickly so that is a big incentive for those who happened to miss it and want to be sure they don't miss it the following year they come out and volunteer and that's just one heck of a fun party  i always thank the volunteers as i pass because someone once told me a long time ago every time you think of volunteer a nd comes off your time so i love that and i do it all the time but there are obvious here other tasks that we don't see run into volunteers are doing what are those jobs well one of the other very important ones that we do see volunteer oh yes i want to talk about that for a nd only because i had an amazing experience this past weekend i went to delude minnesota to volunteer at grandma's marathon that's so cool and i participated in their baggage operation and it gave me i mean not that i didn't have a mensa respect for bag check volunteers already but you know to to actually do the role and to see how physical and how somewhere i was afterwards and i'm pretty fit but i well i i really got an amazing workout so i would encourage volunteers who want to get a little bit of a workout when they're not running a race come to bag check you'll be doing a lot of bending and tossing and throwing in organizing and it is a very fulfilling experience even though it sounds like it's not well i can imagine i was going to ask you for tips for volunteers but a tip for the runner is not to put the kitchen sink into those bags i'm shopping when i see some writers put in that little bag right now and that's why you're hauling in hefting yes exactly yeah i know that we as runners need our gear at our finish line but available everything is open now all the way through the midnight run so make sure you register i would also ask our volunteers to register for the race that they know that they're going to be able to commit to  we want to keep the options open for everybody and if someone signs up for three or four different events only planning on deciding to come to the one where they wake up in the already in great in the sun is shining that's not very helpful to the rest of the running community so be mindful of that money has to be out there in the cold in the snow in there and dressed for the weather i mean a tip for any volunteer on race day is to to check the weather in the winter time don't come dressed to run you'll be cold come dress to stand in cool temperatures wear many many layers we can always you know take layers off but if you come under dressed you're going to be uncomfortable and not have a great time and  another thing i'd like to you know a suggestion that i'd like to make is when you open your eyes on volunteer morning early early morning and you question why did i sign up for this follow through show up we don't have many people who check out and say they didn't enjoy themselves it's so important especially us as runners to give ak to our running community and every  away feeling fulfilled well they are the backbone of every event we couldn't do this without of volunteers and you do a great job with them because every volunteer i see on the course they're always smiley encouraging we love their ers and working with the volunteers how was it impacted your life well i have to say you know i came from the for profit world into the nonprofit world and the cultural differences as you can imagine are very very extreme different values very very different value system so i get up every day now and feel that i really do live our mission of inspiring people through running i'm surrounded by young enthusiastic people who are also living our mission they make me feel young i'm no spring chicken as you know and it's just such a heartwarming  came to team for kids and st met you in two thousand and twelve i had run a bunch of marathons than i once had in the back of my mind of a misconception that people use charity just as a way to get in to to the event yes and i quickly learned how wrong i was about that that charity runners are doing something that's so much bigger than themselves  for a cause that they're passionate about and if in fact they did use a charity to get into event into an event the quickly realize how  embrace the mission the mission is and also to see st time marathoners i was one of those once going through you know just juggling a difficult time in my life and  it gave me a community and stress reduction and just to see the transformation of somebody who and you and i have spoken to hundreds of these people  is or poster is exactly that because those words came out of his mouth and he spoke to you and i about this do you think i'll be able to do it now he's a six star marathon major  us he's run countless marathons so they can do it they can do it we've never i don't think there's one person who's ever back down or say i'm not going to do it and the lifelong friendships about our st year we had an amazing team  they weathered the storm well right right and they run with team for kids to this day you know what else i found out about our charity runners in particular is that maybe some of them did join a charity to get into the marathon but there's what over two hundred charities they could have chosen so for them to choose team for kids i mean they had a connection and over the course of the training period they come to embrace the mission yes mary how do you fit it all in getting up early two kids who just graduated college a full time job getting an all your training and your husband who's also a runner how do you manage that i don't want to say it's easy but because i to have joined this community which is what are we that every morning we wake up and say i can't wait to start the day i can't wait to go to work or i can't wait to go for a run right it's really really wonderful this is a gift this is a gift we have had for you to get more volunteers in and share that gift you're quite exceptional well as i said our volunteers come from all backgrounds and walks of life  and they make me a better person well i don't know how much a better person you can get near your pretty exceptional as it is so with that act i want to thank mary for sharing her life and all those great tips about being a volunteer i also want to thank the manhattan neighborhood network for their use of this great space and of course the legendary will sanchez so i hope today you've learned the important role of volunteer for me i have just spent the most delightful afternoon speaking with my dear friend mary haskins mary and i go way back working at new york road runners and what was so special about my time working with mary is coaching for team for kids and i actually i cried because it was some of the most men and enjoyable moments of work i can't even call it work but it was working with a team of mostly st time marathoners who on that very st day of practice came to was shaking and nervous and looking at us with those big eyes and say i don't think i can do this can i really want a marathon and fifty three months later they're crossing that finish line of the new york city marathon and they have accomplished something in superman noble something you never thought possible and it was through mary and all the coaches that they made that possible and it's just it's a life long line of friends and a journey that changes everyone's lives it changed my life and i know that it changes all the lies of people who run for team for kids and we stay connected and we stay a family and we run together even when we don't have to marry and i just ran the tokyo marathon together and that's an experience i will never forget we're running is a gift my friendship with mary is a gift and every day i just feel very blessed to have this life go