At our UVRC Board meeting a couple of months ago, Krissy Flythe, the Lebanon Recreation and Parks representative  to the board, announced that she had discovered a pile of rollover funds in the UVRC account, due in part to lower expenses resulting from canceled club activities and events, and suggested that we might want to consider spending some money on a meaningful project. Installing a water fountain on the rail trail was one idea, supporting a local charity that promotes running was another. "How about face masks to protect our runners from COVID-19?" = great idea. Tim Smith and Paul Coats looked into what type of mask (one layer or two, etc.) was most effective, Dorcas DenHartog suggested checking out Podium Wear, the company Hanover High School had recently purchased masks from and I contacted them and got the ball rolling. I suggested we give the masks ($15 value) to new members and those who renewed for 2021. We also thought this would be a good “carrot” to get runners to renew their membership. Even runners can be forgetful…

I volunteered to process the 200 masks - slip them into envelops with a cover letter and pass them along to Krissy to apply postage and mail them out to those who wanted a face mask with a cool UVRC logo on it. The response was slow at first but then picked up and, as a result, on Friday January 29th I dropped off about 50 masks to be distributed to new and renewing members. I will say that the ordering and processing seemed like an onerous task at first, but then I started to get positive feedback from grateful runners and I couldn’t wait to distribute another mask to help keep our runners safe.