testedtodestruction: Olympic Volunteering

It's now long enough after the Olympics for the whole thing to have pretty much sunk in. I have overcome the sleep defecit, and am just about functioning as a normal human being- but haven't yet managed to get back into all the running and cycling that I was doing beforehand.
(Odd isn't it that the olympics were meant to inspire everyone to get out and do stuff, and yet I was far more active before I went than after I came back... it was probably something to do with a minor tweak I picked up down there, but there you go)

This is just a short post with a couple of photos (we have a total of more than 1000) about the whole thing as there have been so many stories, articles and column inches written about the whole thing that at some point a line will have to be drawn. Rather than write a whole huge long rambling story, I thought it might be nice to write a few of the things that really stuck out in my mind.

- The atmosphere in the park, the velodrome, and even the tube was amazing. Everyone was focussed on what was good about London and the Olympics.

Inside the "drome"

- 6,000 people in an enclosed velodrome make more noise than 80,000 people in a stadium. When Chris Hoy kicks, he really goes for it.

- When you have 70,000 volunteers all in the same uniform, it doesn't feel quite so horrendous as when you first saw it. No, it will never be fashionable, no, the epaulettes did not look good, but the number of people wearing it made it ok rather than laughable.

- Walking through Stratford first thing in the morning, surrounded by police with guns, people in purple shouting "Good Morning" at you, and being ushered in the "right" direction feels strange, and uncomfortably close to a police state.

- No you can't bring any kind of drink, and only a small amount of food into the Olympic park, but you can pay exorbitant amounts of cash for "food" once you are in there.

- Enthusiastic volunteers make things work - and work well.

- Speak to everyone you can, and learn from them. Tomorrow they may well turn out to be a Gold Medal winner.

"The Bolt"

- No matter where you go and what organisation you work for, middle managers will always have had the same training - "management by dictatorship"

- When volunteering be prepared to be knackered for the vast majority of the time, but still have a smile on your face.

Yes, it was a jolly old time, and I learned a lot. It was not only the meeting of the athletes that was fantastic, but the opportunity to meet with and talk to other health professionals, physios, sports doctors, paramedics etc. with in a sporting context as this enabled me to see how the whole thing was put together, and also enabled me to appreciate the differences in what we do and the angles from which we are coming from in terms of sports people and their injuries.
My time in the velodrome watching athletes practice and perform to the best of their abilities, and also seeing them as normal people was very inspiring. They are normal people doing extraordinary things.