It's fair to say that a lot of screwdrivers (and screws, hammer, nails, saws, shovels, brooms, string, tape, sections of wood...) were required for today's production at School21, where our friendly host Maggy had quite a bit planned for us to get done.

Fortunately we came with lots of pairs of willing hands, as Sooz, Hilary and Nick arrived from volunteering at Junior parkrun, Ambra from Redbridge, a first time GG task for Paul, and it was great to see Kevin again (once he'd worked out how to get into the school itself...).

First up was reducing the size of a woodchip area in the playground (the "easier task" per our host) - this involved shifting a row of car tyres that formed the boundary, and then shovelling/brushing the woodchip that was now outside of the tyre line back inside the play area - once done, Maggy asked us to glue some of the tyres (that weren't already cable tied together) to stop the children moving them around. Getting the "hard as nails" glue out of the tube was a workout in itself, but Kev then worked out a neat way to then ensure sufficient pressure was applied to both surfaces to get the bonding to happen...

We then moved on to the main event - "teepee building", where we discovered that certain team members seemed to have particular skills learned from times past that were extremely useful today (call Ambra if you ever find yourself needing a raft tied together in a hurry...) - as what we had was a series of broom handles, random offcuts of wood, some string, a variety of tools (of varying usefulness), some elastic bungee cords and the piece of material that would be the cover...it was up to us to come up with the construction masterplan, including deciding on the actual shape of the shelter...Scrapheap Challenge GoodGym style.

After an hour of deliberating, planning, measuring and sawing (specialist subject of Paul), tying (Ambra), frantic hammering and some quite challenging use of a screwdriver or two (there's never enough torque when you really need it), we had the frame built and it was time to put the cover over the top and tuck the edges under the pallet. We nominated Ambra to try it on for size, and it was a thumbs up all round - especially from Maggy's son who was keen to get inside and start reading...

As we stood under the big tree at 0850 this morning, we were wondering where everyone was, especially with the sun in the sky and dry conditions underfoot - what we did have though was a full complement of volunteers (13 today), including 6 GoodGymmers which was great news as we didn't need to go to the crowd to find a few more marshals.

Of course by five to nine the place was buzzing, and after Nick did the run briefing and led the warmup, it was time for the off and the usual mad dash to the first turning point where Hilary was on duty.

As has been the trend, a small breakaway group soon escaped the pack and were clearly determined to fight (figuratively...) to the finish, whilst everyone behind was happy just to be out on a warm Sunday morning. Passing Rob at the playground turn, Harvey at "Sarah's Tree" and Rue at "far away corner" we were soon through Lap 1, and Sooz, as Tail Walker was breaking into a trot to keep up.

A sprint finish saw our top 3 separated by only four seconds, with 1st and 3rd achieving PBs. We even had to break open the box of spare tokens as 60 happy runners crossed the finish line this morning, of which 16 were first timers to London Fields, and 13 were absolute first timers to junior parkrun...their (or their parent's) Sundays will never be the same.