parkrun (the junior version or otherwise) is most certainly not a race, but occasionally you do have to doff your cap to one of our Sunday morning runners who clearly had more than one weetabix for breakfast this morning. Our first finisher, on a first time visit from his usual course at Leyton, crossed the line in an awe inspiring 6:56, more than a minute clear of his closest "pursuer" - chapeau m'sieur, as they say in bike racing. The maths is easy to work out his per km splits!!

Thanks as ever to our very helpful GoodGym volunteers who arrived at the big tree this morning and made sure everything ran smoothly - Hilary, John and Harvey were deployed as Course Marshals at key spots around the course, whilst Sooz and Nick kept it all largely under control at the start/finish line by barcode scanning, marshalling, encouraging and run directing, and all of our 40 finishers, including 1 absolute first timer, and 2 who received their half-marathon wristbands for each having completed 11 runs, crossed the line smiling (if a little red faced and out of breath), although a few needed to be guided towards the finish funnel...

More of the same under the big tree next week (super speedy times not guaranteed...) - join us if you can!

Sunday started early - VERY early. 7am at Aid Station 4 on the Hackney Half Marathon Route (just by Broadway Market!). There were plenty of bleary eyes, but thankfully the sun was already shining as we arrived ready for the day ahead.

Our first mission: water station setup. And if there’s one thing permanently burnt into our minds now, it’s the maths of the tables - 20 by 8 cups on each layer, 5 layers high, over and over and over again. Tables after tables after tables. Somewhere between the endless cup stacking and chatting away, the morning flew by! The best part was meeting so many brilliant Goodgymers from all over London - and, naturally, we even ended up recruiting new members whilst we were at it!

Then the motorcade arrived and the first runners appeared… From that point on it just never stopped for the next 2–3 hours. Thousands of runners streamed past as we handed out water as fast as humanly possible, cheered people on, tried to decipher names scribbled across bibs, shouted encouragement at every fancy dress costume we spotted, and kept our eyes peeled for our fellow GoodGym runners amongst the crowds. There were even a few famous faces mixed in too. Some runners just wanted a sip, others their bottles filling, others wanted us to throw a cup of water over them!

It was loud, sunny, exhausting, and genuinely brilliant - such a fantastic community vibe. Before we knew it, the runners had passed through, the cups had disappeared, the tables were packed away, and by around 1pm we were wrapped up after an amazing morning.

A huge well done to everyone who ran, volunteered, organised, cheered, stacked cups, handed out water, and kept the energy going all morning long!

Until next year! And who knows — you might even spot some of the people handing out your water this time swapping volunteer bibs for running bibs and taking on the 13.1 miles through the streets of Hackney themselves…