Our visit to Acton Juniors this morning was Maria's 101st good deed. She secretly snuck in an under the radar session on Wednesday, when no one was looking to reach the wonderful milestone of century of sessions with GoodGym, earning her 🪽🪽s. As a result, Maria had the honour of wearing the pink GoodGym angel wings at today's task 😇. She's become a GoodGym regular since joining 2 years ago and has been to many different types of tasks, walking and cycling her way all over the borough 👏🙌✨.

Steph and Maria arrived early for the Junior parkrun and helped Marco, today's Run Director, by completing the course check and setting up signs and cones. Rather than describing the course layout to today's runners, Marco told everyone that it was "complicated" at the briefing, but there were marshals - like Steph and Maria - around the course to guide the runners which worked perfectly.

Kash and Sevan avoided those complexities by volunteering in the funnel where they were barcode scanning and timekeeping. Together they logged the 32 runners who completed the course today. It was again noticeably a lot quieter than usual as many people were still away on holiday, so runner numbers are expected to bounce back as the end of the school holidays gets nearer.

Our latest visit to Acton Junior parkrun aligned with the start of the school holidays. There was lots of chat between the parents and also the volunteers about their summer plans and again, fewer children than normal.

The roster was surprisingly full, until a space opened up as a warm up leader. The Run Director was advised how to handle this by other volunteers:

"I need someone to lead the warm up."
"I've been told that the GoodGym woman is very good." - Run Director
"That GoodGym woman is not here" - Kash

Neither Kash not Sevan were keen to stand in for Maria or Kat, recent GoodGym warm up leaders, in front of the children and run through the routine. Instead they stuck to their more familar and comfortable roles as tailwalker for Kash and barcode scanner for Sevan.

All of today's runners completed the course quickly. Even at the tail, so everything was packed up in record time.

There were a few regular runners missing at Acton Junior parkrun this morning, which may have something to do with last night's England vs Norway game at the World Cup that finished late. A few tired eyed volunteers were seen with their sunnies on. The children, the parents or maybe both needed a lie in too, so there were only 40 finishers with a huge 19 volunteers!

After Kat led the warm up, the runners made their way around the course with the runner at the front storming away, finishing nearly a minute ahead of second place. They ran past Alan, Michelle, Steph and Sevan who were all marshaling, then through Kat (again) now as funnel manager to Divya scanning barcodes. The only GoodGymer which they wouldn't have noticed was Kash who was tail walking again at the back.

Well done to Kat for coming all the way from Uxbridge early this morning to keep her Community Mission streak going 👏👏👏! If you're as dedicated and motivated as that, we're back at Acton Juniors again next week, so check out which roles still need to filled and check out how to sign up here.

On a blissfully cooler day after the recent heatwave, the number of children at Acton Juniors was down on the usual, with 53 finishers. The organisers were talking about the return of a local school next week, which as we saw last time, brought a huge influx of runners and the need for extra volunteers, so if you can help, please sign up directly with Acton Juniors on the 5th of July.

While the number of runners was down, there was a strong showing of 6 GoodGymers. Maria led by running the warm up, Kash was mopping up those at the back as the tail walker and in between, Alan and Steph were marshalling, Sevan timekeeping and Divy scanned the finishers' barcodes.

Steph had a fun time dealing with sausage dogs that were off their leash. At one point he had to funnel the runners past one dog that was blocking their path to make sure that all people and dogs safely enjoyed the park this morning and no sausage dogs were made to roll.

We have 2 sessions listed with Acton Juniors in July. If you're free on either the 12th or the 19th, please join us to help this family event run safely and to make it a fun morning for all of the children taking part.

There were a lot of children at Acton Junior parkrun this morning. It was a surprise to most people, including the Run Director, who hadn't planned for it. Only one of the regulars told Sevan:

"I forgot when the school were coming" 🤫

Yep, a school had encouraged their students to come along today and it had doubled the usual number of runners. Acton Juniors had gained 60 extra participants. Most GoodGymers reported that it was either "busy" or "chaos" with Maria reporting lots of corner cutters, Steph's high fiving hands were working overtime and in the funnel, children and parents were backing up as Sevan tried to scan all of their barcodes. Chaos reigned until reinforcements were put in place.

Kash was tail walking on her 100th parkrun volunteer and to her, everything was pretty normal. The extra numbers didn't make any difference to what was happening at the back of the field.

It took longer than usual to wrap everything up. Most of the new children looked to have a good experience and with any luck will become regulars in the coming weeks and months.

Today's Acton Junior parkrun was full of changes as usual. Before the start, there were lots of swaps being discussed, with a few of the GoodGymers wishing that that could take someone else's role. Harvey could have done without the pressure of time keeping and Maria, who was tail walking, wasn't in the mood for grumpy or crying children today.

Kash and Sevan were pretty content marshalling, along with Hassan who was up bright and early for his first good deed. Hassan had joined for a social run earlier in the year and was back today to help the Junior parkrun run smoothly. Welcome to GoodGym! 👏🥳. Finally, Joanna was cool as a cucumber, time keeping alongside Harvey, trying to ease the pressure.

The main drama was a Greener Ealing van that decided to invade the course and was moved on by the Run Director just in time for the runners to get going. The driver said that they were in the park every Sunday morning, so they should already have known to stay out of the way. Even Maria had a quiet time today as all of the children were happy to be running around the course, from the front of the field to the back.