We had two representatives at parkruns across Cambridge this weekend! There was Harriet at Fulbourn Hospital on one side of town, and Caroline at Brook Leys over on the other. 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

Harriet made for an excellent marshal, cheering on the runners and walkers and providing valuable moral support. Caroline got to work placing signs directing participants and battling the winds to highlight benches with hi-vis tabards, before taking the mic to deliver the first timers briefing. She can now tick 'standing atop a tree planter to deliver an amplified address to a surprisingly large crowd' off her bucket list! 🎤

With a number of nearby events offlined, Brook Leys saw 667 runners and walkers - what an amazing atmosphere! A real highlight was helping someone at their first ever parkrun register last-minute to have a barcode in time, and catching up with them afterwards to hear how much they enjoyed it. The spirit of parkrun was on full display today! ☺️

For today's community mission, 3 goodgymers headed to Arbury for a litter pick. Caroline, Eva and Harriet put on their layers and met up to help clean up a community courtyard with lots of shops. The biggest culprits were the cigarette butts, and the team used the fiddly job to practice their picker skills! 🚬🪏

During the task, the group rotated roles and took turns to either pick or hold the rubbish bag. Forgetting to bring the hoops that help, Caroline accidentally made bag-holding a more important role! Plenty of chats about upcoming holidays and homemade knitwear were an added bonus 🧣🧤

Making the most of a crisp, clear morning, GoodGym were out bright and early at parkrun this weekend.

Daiana, Ross and Josie arrived early to help set up the course at Milton Country Park. With the sun shining, blue skies overhead and a few lingering puddles on the paths, conditions were chilly (around 0°C!) but absolutely perfect for a winter run.

Around 200 runners and walkers joined the event, proving that the cold was no match for parkrun spirit ❄️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ Daiana took on marshalling duties, cheering participants around the course, while Ross was busy scanning barcodes at the finish. Josie supported with token sorting and helped ensure the set-up ran smoothly from start to finish.

A joyful morning, great teamwork, and another successful parkrun completed — well done everyone 🙌

For our group run this week, we headed across town to drop some food and household items at a Cambridge City Foodbank donation point.🥫

With one of us pushing through a cold and the other recovering from food poisoning, we took a steady jog along Mill Road from Parkside pools to Sainsbury's. Caroline carried her donations, so had an extra weighted workout 💪

Between us we donated at least one of nearly all the most needed items on the list, which will be distributed to those who need it in our community.

This morning we were out once again with Abbey People. Our task was to maintain the banks along Coldham's Brook, which will help encourage wildlife and a range of habitats. We cleared away trees and shrubs which Cambridge City Council had already cut down and we used the branches to build up a bank alongside the brook. There was a lot of sawing and lopping as we cut branches down to more manageable sizes to carry over to the brook. We also cleared away overgrowth to allow more light on to the stream and also to make a more walkable path. It was quite a muddy task but it was great to see the difference we could make in one morning.

GoodGymers were running around courses and earthworks at parkruns this week.

Welcome to Josie who joined for her first GoodGym task. She ran and then helped sort tokens at Coldham's parkrun, fuelled by brownies that had been baked for the volunteers! The run was muddy (although no where near as bad as Milton has been recently) but luckily the rain held off until the end.

Harriet was volunteer coordinator at Fulbourn Hospital parkrun and had an eventful start to the morning having to create course diversions around building works that had sprung up. With a solid team effort the amended course was signed off and all went smoothly.

Caroline and Catherine were off representing GoodGym and running parkruns in Europe. Catherine getting a 'Z' for her parkrun alphabet in The Netherlands, and Caroline braving the -8 conditions and running in the snow in Oslo! ❄️