Tyler Run For Autism Marathon

Abraham Samyono
Apr 1, 2017
2 min read

The Muslim Student Association volunteers at the annual Tyler Run for Autism Marathon that is held on the first Saturday of April, which is an annual event that takes place during the first Saturday of April, because April is Autism Awareness month, where the Muslim

Student Association members would help with handing out medals at the finish line, and assist with cleaning up after the event is over, but this year most of them decided to sleep in, because they were extremely exhausted from the day before, so my brother and I were the only ones who showed up this year.

The organization began volunteering since 2016. Usually they would meet up at the mosque in Tyler for morning prayer, and from there they would go to the event to help set up early in the morning. Unfortunately I was the only one who came to the event to volunteer with my brother, I assumed everyone else slept in that day. So when we got there we registered to volunteer, and then we were assigned our tasks. My brother and I would hand out medals to the exhausted runners who would usually whoosh past us at the finish line, and walkers and joggers. There were three different kinds of medals that were awarded: one mile medals were had a blue ribbon attached to the Autism Awareness logo, which is a puzzle piece with four other pieces inside each containing a different color of red, dark blue , sky blue and yellow, the 10k medals had a red ribbon attached to a round medal piece with the Autism Awareness logo inside, and finally the marathon medal had a slightly larger metal emblem with a white ribbon and red letters on it.

It was a slightly cold morning that day. Both my brother and I were sleep deprived, since we were up so early in the morning. I was astonished that this many people of all ages were participating in the marathon. There were people running individually, and families running together, and some of them pushed their baby on a stroller as they ran.

After we finish handing out all of the medals we would help clean up after the event is over by picking up litter. We would then go to the different booths where different businesses would hand out free things for the people attending the event. My brother and I got breakfast burritos from the Taco Bell booth, which was a flour tortilla, with tatter tots and melted cheese inside, and juice from another stall. We left afterwards at around 10 a.m.