The children at Junior parkruns are all characters in their own right. After the start of the of the new school term, there were a lot of new faces. Some fast, some slower, all with their unique personalities.

The volunteers brought their personalities to the parkrun too, with run director Geoff bringing his Wonky Bear, made from reused parkrun t-shirts, others being more casual than usual and Maria stepping forward to lead the first timers' briefing and today's warm up with Kash supporting.

Maria triple-roled today, also barcode scanning alongside Sevan. Divy funnel managed a well behaved group of runners ahead of Joanna who dished out today's finish tokens. Chris and Steph were marshals and Kash was last to the finish, tail walking again.

Today's final runner was quite stop-start. Their mum tried to motivate them around the course and for a while the prize of getting some jelly babies worked and then mum upped the offer to cake. There was also free motivation all around in the universal Junior parkrun power up of high fives 🖐️. Rather than meeting hand with hand, our Junior chose to rush the outstretched paws with a headbutt and had lots of fun doing it.

Alan cycled and Steph Ducat ran to Acton Junior parkrun where both were marshalling this Sunday. As I was early I had the pleasure to put together the table. We had a few speedy children this morning and the girls beat the boys to the finish line. 1st and 2nd position for the girls. well done to all runners and walkers.

A last minute change of plans meant that Kash, Maria and Sevan found themselves at Acton Junior parkrun for the second week in a row. Kash and Sevan had found spots on the roster as marshals and Maria took the usually chilled out role of funnel manager.

Today there was some minor trouble in the funnel as the 39 finishers passed through. Two parents disrupted Maria's morning as they joined their children in crossing the finish line. Two runners too caused problems after a sprint finish, leaving Maria to work out who crossed the line first. That was only one of the photo finishes today with 3 pairs of runners crossing the line within a second of each other. What a close, competitive, friendly group of children.

Today was thankfully cooler than our last visit to Acton Junior parkrun. Either due to that or more of the runners not being away on their summer holidays, there were a few more finishers today and by the next time we're here, schools will be back and they should return to the normal numbers of children 🤞.

For today's run, Maria took centre stage, leading the warm up session again. Steph, Kash and Sevan marshalled around the course, Chris took on the role of timekeeper and Maria completed the circle of parkrun, being at the start and the end, by scanning barcodes too.

Sevan paired up with a new-to-Acton marshal at the roundabout and showed them how and when the children would appear at their marshal point. He also tried to explain the complicated course layout, which is still indescribable. Is it like a snail? 🐌 Some of the new children didn't get it either, needing the marshals to point them in the right direction to get them to the finish. They'll have learned from the guidance and will know what to do next time.

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.