Big kudos to the 6 GoodGymers who helped return bags to runners taking part in the Manchester Marathon this year! Welcome to Ewan who picked a big task for his first GoodGym Manchester outing.

We arrived bright and early to get our hi-viz, packed lunch, and briefing from Claire, one of the bag collection team leaders. We were allocated Group 2, to start unloading and laying out bags from lorry number 2 for the initial waves of starters. With a system in place to order the bags from highest to lowest on the ground and then only having a single layer of bags on the lorry bed seemed to work out OK. Once the harnesses had finally arrived, Jordan along with a couple of additional helpers enabled us to reach to bags at the back so we were ready for finishers coming in.

Bit by bit, bags were safely returned with their owners, with many suffering a little bit in the unexpected Manchester sun and heat. Through a combination of good prep and teamwork, I think we managed quite well, even when it got a bit busy in the rush hour between about 12pm and 1pm.

Once we had a very brief break, we were assigned to lorry number 11 to repeat the task again, this time Stefanie getting in the harness to get into the lorry and get the bags in reach of those on the ground. With us being right at the end of the queue of lorries, lots of tired looking runners managed to reach us only to have to go back the other way to get their t-shirt, freebies, meet friends & family which seemed a bit of a trek after completing 26.2 miles!

With the bags in order and many having been returned to the runners, we reached the end of our shift after 5pm to sign out and watch some of the finishers on Oxford Road nearby.

Long day but was made much more fun as a group and having a decent packed lunch and snacks on hand. The warm and sunny weather helped too.