One of Housing and Habitat’s main projects is a 5 kilometer run open to OSC community and also to invitation. At this point, Homerun has spread to sports clubs outside OSC. Because of scheduling complications, this year’s Homerun event was moved from the 1st semester into the 2nd semester.

As our main annual fundraiser, our group was pretty familiar with its preparation and execution. To keep up with the traffic changes and unsure the safety of runners on busy roads that were not previously much of a risk, we edit the route every year. Then assign stations run by groups of two Housing members to make sure  runners don’t get lost. Besides the direction logistics, we have to plan to have fresh fruit and water available to runners en route and at the finish line. We also recently paired with the Care For Paws service group to allow runners and their dogs to participate in the run.

For the past 3 Homerun events, my job has been to run the registration desk at the starting point and to prepare the refreshments for when the runners have completed the run instead of manning one of the checkpoints along the route. I make sure people pay the entrance fee and are aware of the route and checkpoints. This year we sold t-shirts at the registration desk as well.

The only hiccup all throughout the event was our order for water fell through and we had to send Nehe and Josh to get water bottles. Luckily, we caught this mistake in time and there was a Laugfs supermarket open at 5:30. We were able to have enough water for the runners.

Unfortunately, the use of plastic during the event was really upsetting. Our service has previously decided on bringing paper cups but we ended up having members bring in plastic cups. Runners would drink from a cup one and then throw it away…In the future, I’d really like to see us encouraging runners to run with a reusable water bottle instead of using single-use plastic cups.