On a misty morning, Leanne and James met at York Community Woodland for some pre-parkrun litter picking.

James had double booked himself as a parkrun car park marshal at the time of the mission, so turned up early to make up for it. He'd already managed half a bag of litter when Leanne cycled past to start litter picking from the other end of the track. She found an abandoned trolley just as her bag was getting too heavy, so made use of it to collect even more litter on the way back to the car park to return the trolley (and see James in full marshalling flow).

Unfortunately there weren't any bins in sight to leave the collected litter, so they had an extra workout carrying it 800m back down the track before joining the parkrun crowd for a quick(ish) 5km run.

A fun half hour spent bossing people around making sure they park considerately. Lots of waving and thumbs up and nodding.

Goodgym supported Tristram who was run director at the new York Community Woodlands Parkrun this week. The new parkrun has been a big success with runners but is still building up a team of regular volunteers. Michael and James did the carpark and road marshalling at the start, Barbara marshalled in the middle of the course, Pete did the timekeeping and Laura and David funnel managed. Luckily the numbers weren't too high this week. Well done to Tristram as run director.

This morning at York Community Woodland Parkrun (Or YoCoWo some people are disappointed to hear it's becoming known as!) some of the GG crew stepped in to Car park marshall, course marshall, funnel manage, number check and deliver the first timers briefing.

Shout out to Nick for the most effort - he not only did two different volunteering roles, but also managed to run too!

Today was week 4 of the new York Community Woodlands Parkrun and word has definitely got out given the number that flocked ti hear Laura's first timers briefing!

Our very own Nick was RD and with the help of the new loud speaker set off 550+ runners and walkers off round the 2 lapper 5k course.

We welcomed Kit to the parkrun volunteer family as a marshall. Thank you Kit! We also had goodgymers doing lots of roles- marshal, barcode scanning, funnel managing, car parking and tokens!

Many of us then headed to Dobbies for a nice breakfast with at least three if us showing true commitment by getting a Dobbies loyalty card!

We also need to give Stef a shout if for completing his 400th parkrun!

if you're interested in volunteering we will be listing this again for a few weeks to help get it up and running.

After the success of the inaugural parkrun at York Community Woodland last week (and the fact that under the 'Griff parkrun protocol' numbers had been kept low), run director Michael was expecting bigger numbers for that difficult second album (event). No one knew how many, but it was best to be prepared. A quick shout towards goodgym was all that was needed to help fill up the Saturday morning roster.

All was quiet at the woodlands at 8am, just a solitary horse out for a morning trot, and then a few volunteers arrived to help setup. Leanne took on the (sometimes feared) task of timekeeping, Hannah and Vicky had phones charged ready for scanning, Laura donned a high vis vest ready to cajole runners through the finish funnel, and Michal authoritatively stood by with a clipboard to keep a track of times (made much easier as a bunch of Yorkies had turned up to run so he could write down their times).

The forecast in the week had threatened rain, but thankfully it held off until later in the day, we were all thankful for this as rain can play havoc with phones for timekeeping and paper that needs to be written on, and that's before you add in getting wet and cold! The cold was still present (it is February after all), and there were a few numb fingers by the end!

As the clock neared 9 o'clock, more and more runners and walkers kept arriving, a noticeable increase on the previous week, and still they came. News reached us that the parking wasn't quite chaos, but it wasn't far off, so Michael held on until just before 9 as RD to make sure as many people as possible had made it to the start line. After a shouted run brief (no speakers yet, hopefully soon) it was time to count down and the runners were off. Vicky predicted there were 650 present, and clearly the crystal ball was working well, as after the GG'ers had helped everyone across the line, scanned them and sorted through the results the final total came to 648.

It was great to see so many GG Yorkies out running too (especially for Michal who was tasked with spotting known finishers).

By 10 the rush was over, the runners and walkers headed back off home, or to Dobbies for a well earned breakfast, and it was time to pack up.

Another task well done by the York GG'ers, who have been fabulous throughout in helping York gain a new parkrun