Every parkrun only happens because of the time and dedication of our volunteers. Many thanks to all of them, past and present. We are always looking for new volunteers. This page explains how to get involved.

How to get involved

Volunteering at bedford parkrun really couldn't be easier: simply email BedfordHelpers@parkrun.com, tell us that you would like to register as a volunteer, and whether you would like a weekly reminder, a monthly reminder or indeed if you don't want a reminder at all. The volunteer co-ordinator will send out a reminder email, either at the beginning of the week or at the beginning of the month (depending on which option you chose). If you feel like volunteering then just respond to the mail and you will be rostered when you want. If you don't want an email reminder, just email us whenever you feel like helping (early in the week would be best). Later in the week we then send out a roster to everybody who has volunteered that week.

What would I do at the Event?

First, and most importantly, we never ask anybody to do anything they're not comfortable with. If you don't want a particular task, please let us know and we will happily give you an alternative job. Nevertheless, none of our tasks are too stressful. You could be organising the finish funnel, operating the timer, or registering the runners' positions on the computers; we try to start people out on a general marshalling type job to start with, so they get a feel for how we operate. But if you really want to do something in particular, please let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Do I get my name in lights?

We like to recognise and publicly thank all our volunteers, and your name will appear on our home page in the This Week's Heroes section. We also keep a log of what tasks everybody has done. To do this you need to be registered on our system. Most volunteers have previously run at one of our events, and so will already be on our system. If you have not registered, it's really easy to do so: just go to the parkrun registration page and fill in the simple form.

Points, glorious points

And there's more,.. We don't want our regular runners to be penalised in the yearly points competition just because they volunteered, so every runner gets full points for volunteering on up to three occasions per year.

Join us

email BedfordHelpers@parkrun.com today.

Our volunteers really are the stars of parkrun.

Next time you see them, tell them how wonderful they are.