“Rashmi, left. You cycle on the left side of the road… oh boy.”

– Luca and Disara, Great friends; greater believers of my cycling disabilities.

Four years of Home Run. Four years of consistently dragging myself out of bed on a perfectly normal Saturday morning – the one day I get to sleep in – to run 5km in the name of charity. Oh, did I mention that Home Run has always been followed by two hours of strenuous badminton training?

Home Run is an event that is organized by OSC’s Housing and Habitat community service group and has been their biggest annual fundraiser over the last few years, similar to Care for Paw’s annual Christmas Bake Sale. Many athletic coaches make it mandatory for athletes participating in Season 2 sports (Badminton, Girls’ Basketball and Boys’ Football) to attend the event. Despite being called Home Run, people are given the freedom to choose between walking, jogging, distance running and even cycling and there are stop points between each kilometer where you can stop and have a glass of water or refill your bottle. Despite my complaining, I do enjoy attending Home Run and it does give me a sense of accomplishment to know that over the past four years, my timing has significantly improved which goes to show that I have improved in my physical capabilities. Given that badminton has been a second season sport, I never really had the choice of backing out and since I never fell sick or got injured during the time it has been something I stuck with since I joined OSC.

Last year, Disara and I decided to collaborate with the Housing and Habitat service group to organize Home Run as we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to encourage families within our school community to spend time with their pets. And what better way to do so than to go on a run with them? The event was successful: we had a dog drive through which we received various pet foods to feed the dogs at each stop point, we had water ordered separately for all animals and had placed members from our service who weren’t running the Home Run at various stop points to help out. But there was a catch: we didn’t really consider the health precautions that was associated with dogs running or even walking 5km, especially if they weren’t used to doing such long distances.

It was tragic and trust me when I say this, I nearly died of guilt but due to our lack of precautions and advanced warnings, one of the pets ended up getting a stroke and passing away. I had no idea how to even face the student who the dog belonged to and when I did, it took everything in me to apologize without breaking down in the middle of the school hallway. There’s no amount of guilt or apologizing that can undo the tragedy but for what it’s worth, I am – even to this day, nearly a year later – truly sorry and am held fully accountable for my carelessness and ignorance.

I really did not want to have a redo of this event and was completely against the idea of encouraging people to bring their dogs for this year’s Home Run, as advised by some of my teachers as well, but after a very convincing talk from both Disara, my co-service leader, the leaders of Housing and Habitat as well as my service teacher, Elissa Francemone, I was talked into doing it again. But this time, I made sure all precautions were taken.

The first part of ensuring the previous year’s tragedy didn’t occur again was to create an infographic that was shared on the school newsletter as well as the bulleting and posters that were even hung around the school. The infographic contained information regarding whether or not people should bring their pets to Home Run. The infographic advised people to go meet their vet before coming to the event and asking them if their pet was physically capable of handling the 5km. it was very clearly laid out that things can go wrong so every precaution needed to be taken by the owners to ensure that such a tragedy was avoided on their part. On our part, we made sure to have better lookouts. We organized a routine check by which some of our service members were designated to tables to feed and provide water for dogs while others would cycle at separate distances, one in the front group, one in the middle and one in the back, to make sure there was someone from the group to provide help if needed. The truck was also on standby and if it was needed, the cyclists were to call it immediately. Each cyclist also carried water and treats in a bag if it were needed in case of an emergency.

Since the sports seasons were switched around this year, I was under no obligation to run for Home Run this year so I volunteered to cycle and make sure the dogs were doing fine on their walk. The problem was, I hadn’t cycled in years. I didn’t think it would be too much of a problem but to familiarize myself with cycling, I asked one of my friends, Luca, whether I could cycle his bike after school on the side road to school. It’s safe to say that, were he not there, I probably would have gotten road-killed but that’s okay because I learned! Yay! I was not really familiar with the road rules and his guidance helped me a lot so Luca if you’re reading this, thanks bud :)!

On the day of Home Run, I came to school earlier to help set up and prepared to cycle at the back of the line. Once Home Run started however, things got really messy really fast because only two members from our service, myself included, were cycling while the other supporting cyclists were from Housing and Habitat. They had their own share of people to take care of so we had to manage by ourselves. Some people walked with their dogs at the head of the line while others walked in the middle and they were so far paced off that I didn’t really know what to do. Then it clicked me that I could go in the middle, checking up on the front also, and Thomas, the other service member who was cycling, could follow in the back. I did so and managed to cycle between the middle and front group, making sure to check up on all the dogs but by the time I reached the finish line, not many dogs had passed through so I recycled the entire track, following the last pair of dogs to the finish line. I got to now later that the track was actually about 6km so I had cycled 12km in total. Not bad for the first time, if I say so myself.

The event went by smoothly and no dogs were harmed or injured in the process for which I am truly glad. It was truly a great end to a wonderful event that stuck with me throughout my high school years and in its own way, I will miss it. this post is incredibly late given that the event was sometime in January ( I can’t even remember when) but oh well, better late than never.

Till next time!