GoodGym in Birmingham continued to support parkrun as Liam and Aslaug volunteered at Edgbaston Reservoir, and John helped at Perry Hall.

This week we had five goodgymers helping at two parkruns in Birmingham. Liam was giving out tokens and Aslaug was marshaling at Edgbaston Reservoir. Naneesh was out early with Bal setting up the course at Perry Hall while John set up the finish area. Naneesh was then able to take part while James scanned the finishing tokens and John was timekeeping using the app. With the rain deciding to fall just after the start time at 9am, it turned out to be a better day to stand under an umbrella, with a lot of slog and toil for the runners being celebrated by all the volunteers.

Today I set up the course with Naneesh and Bal, who will be doing a few more set ups over the next few weeks, so were making sure they knew the positions of the cones and signs. Doing this, we were all able to take part in the 5k, thanks to the other volunteers, including Aslaug, who was doing her first GoodGym task today. It was great to see her although I can't say we met properly as it was mainly very breathy thank you's as I pushed around to get a fast time.

It was great that James also reached out and volunteered at Cannon Hill parkrun, as Perry Hall had managed to fill their volunteer rota. Fiona also volunteered at Brueton parkrun. It was a valuable thing to do as all of the parkruns are having to find more volunteers than ever because of the Covid framework that they are setting up events with for the foreseeable future. On that note, if you are free on any Saturday mornings coming up, find one of the community missions coming up for information about how you can get involved with your local parkrun.