After a wet night you would never know what’s the weather like the next day! We were lucky to have a reasonably dry and warm morning for the 153rd Charlton park run.

At the beginning of the week, we were struggling to get enough volunteers to support the event. After a gentle appeal, we managed to get enough people from our regular volunteers to Goodgym members not just from Greenwich but also from further afield. It was Joanna Dudziak’s first time volunteering at Charlton park run as the park walker. She’s a Goodgymer from west London and also supporting the blind and visually impaired runners like me through Achilles UK and Islington Goodgym. What a great collaboration to promote running!

A number of celebrations for today: Sarah A was celebrating her 100th park run; there were 34 first timers who came to Charlton park run and that 35 out of the 216 runners/walkers got a new PB.

A strong Greenwich Goodgym team came to support the event. Sarah H, Frankie and JC were the marshals; Pieter helped with the event close down and I was in charge of the first timer’s briefing.

It was amazing to see a family of three generations came to join our park run. A father of three boys and the grandfather and a friend of theirs came for a family run and gathering. Each boy achieved from over a hundred park runs to over two hundred and fifty park runs. The grandfather told me that he only started park run in his 60s when his son first brought him along. He had now done more than 400+ park runs at the age of 76! This is such an inspirational story.