I love marshalling at Junior Parkrun. It’s simple. Don hi viz vest, a whistle in case of emergency and a giant foam finger and I’m on it - ready to cheer the runners on. The hardest thing being to come up with something new to say to the parkrunners as they pass you.

This Sunday was different. I had a new job - barcode scanner. I stayed up late the night before to make sure the technology (Parkrun app) worked. It didn’t but some intense googling fixed the problem.

I turned up at Odd Down cycle circuit with the responsibility of my new job weighing me down. But it was okay - there were two other barcode scanners there to help and we made a formidable team encouraging the children as they ran and then photographing their barcodes and finish tokens and then popping the tokens in the little pot you see in the photo. It was an eye opener to see how the magic worked.

We clocked up 77 finishers and got to see the pride on their faces as they celebrated their achievement - 2km at speed around the track. My achievement - surviving my first barcode scanning task - was small in comparison.