Kash and Sevan were excited to meet Madhan this morning for his first Junior parkrun. In fact, it was his first parkrun ever, running or volunteering!

Kash was was assigned to her usual barcode scanning role while Madhan and Sevan were marshalling in neighbouring positions. After picking up their volunteering hi-viz, Kash and Sevan explained the course, the number of laps and the types of things to say to motivate the passing runners. They hoped that this info and the adaptability of a GoodGymer was all that was needed for Madhan to have a successful first event.

As usual, at 8:50 there were no children in sight. They slowly started to converge on the start line and just before 9am, there looked to be a pretty respectable turn out. As the warm up started, Madhan and Sevan headed off to their positions and Sevan remembered to share a critical piece of wisdom on the 25th time that he was volunteering at parkruns... not to leave the marshaling post until the Tail Walker had passed twice!

As the runners set off, Sevan saw a lot of familiar faces from previous months along with many that were new. That was a great sign.

Once all of the children had completed the course, they checked on the number of finishers which was a huge 64. Even more are expected over the bank holiday weekend, next week. Equally important as the number of finishers was Madhan's feeling that he'd made a difference. He'd been able to motivate a few children to pick up the pace and he found this really rewarding, which is a win!

1, 9, 25, 64. Kash pointed out that square numbers were a theme of the day. What are the chances? They didn't quite make the Fibonnaci sequence with their roots though.

We're sure that the new runners and Madhan were impressed enough to return and increase those numbers further.