Today I went to discover a new Junior Parkrun at Paddington Recreation Ground, outside my usual area. I arrived quite early, so I helped the marshals set up the course signs. They told me how lucky they are to have the Parkrun there, as the council manages the park really well. I was pleasantly surprised to find a small running track in the middle of the park, something I wasn’t expecting!

For today’s event, I took on the role of tail walker/runner for the first time.

There were a few challenges during the morning:

• I was expecting to meet a new GoodGym member, Shriya, but unfortunately, she couldn’t make it at the last minute. The Parkrun team quickly found a replacement volunteer, but they mentioned that in the future, if a GoodGym member needs to cancel, they should send an email before the event so the team can plan ahead.

• Two enthusiastic four-year-old runners decided to stop after their second lap instead of completing all three. This caused a bit of confusion when checking the results and made it tricky to confirm that everyone had finished. As the tail runner, I stayed with them, which meant I couldn’t keep track of the rest of the field as closely as usual.

At the end of the morning, the Parkrun team also faced some technical issues submitting the results. I really enjoyed discovering a new Parkrun community and trying out the tail runner role for the first time!