Sunday morning when everyone is in bed tucked up with a nice cuppa / hangover / newspaper a bunch of fab folks are down on the Knavesmire for the wonderful spectacle that is Junior parkrun.

This Sunday no less than 21 dedicated Goodgymers ran, walked, cycled to make sure that the next generation of runners got a chance for a 2k blast. We took on roles of funnel manager, barcode scannist, token hander outer and most notably marshal at the many marshaling points along the course. The normal orange traffic cones to mark out the marshaling points had been forgotten.

I've got an orange coat - can I be a cone ? said Nikki

It's an absolute inspiration every week to see the 90 or so youngsters tear up the tarmac. There were 10 first timers this week including the inspirational Imogen and the combined crew of 17 marshals ensured that all the runners got hi 5's round the whole route - maybe this contributed to the haul of no less than 19 PB's this morning!!

As we left more GoodGymers rendezvoused for a little training run out along the river - those kids will be chasing you down before you know where you are guys.

A crew of GG Yorkies provided loads of volunteering support for Knavesmire Junior parkrun!

Our local junior parkrun often struggles to fill their volunteer roster. Today in particular with a big local race (the Brass Monkey) happening, the roster can be even harder to fill. We turned up en masse to fill as many roles as we could, to dish out loads of high fives and to spread the GoodGym word. We even welcomed along a few new runners, so make sure you give Beth, Debbie and Michael a big cheer!

Children, they don't run like humans! - Vicky

The stampede begun and hoardes of them came storming down the Knavesmire. On the way back through, the majority absolutely love to high five everyone and it's brilliant fun cheering on all our runners of the future.

Once everyone was safely back and all the kit was packed away, we started our running technique session. Our focus was on high knees and good arm drive.

We started with a warm up where we recognised that some people are more coordinated than others and we learnt that some people can make any drill look like bad dad dancing. After that we had a game of high knee statues before a partner exercise to make sure we were all doing good arms.

Then we did some running drills and exercises using hurdles to practise lifting those knees. We finished with a team coaching activity so we can all learn to be our own best running coach!

Four GoodGym Yorkies met with Ken, Kevin and Kate from Sustrans. Goodgymer John also volunteers for Sustrans so he was metaphorically wearing 2 hats this evening!

After a briefing from Ken we walked along the path down to the river and were showed examples of the invasive balsam that we needed to remove, along with other growth that was encroaching on the cycle path, which is quite narrow along that particular stretch.

*Kate did a great job with her 'slasher' * and Barbara and Mel helped clear up what she had cut down (basically we threw the cuttings over the fence towards the river to mulch down on top of other weeds). We were soon joined by a fifth GoodGymer - Debs, who only started GG last night on her first group run. She is now converted! We were thanked for our efforts by several passers-by and even a passing rower.

Mel said its lovely to be thanked from both the path and the river

After an hour of solid weed pulling and throwing we declared the mission a great success and admired our handiwork. There was a definite improvement in the width of the cycle path, doubling it in most places and making it a lot safer for everyone to use. There's still lots to do along the cycle path so no doubt we will be back balsam bashing soon!