Junior parkrun is a free, weekly 2km running/walking event for children aged between 4 and 14. Due to a recent change in guidelines, junior parkruns in general need several more marshals than they've historically had. To help out with Tower Hamlet's local Junior parkrun, Isabelle and Leo have listed a series of volunteering sessions for Mile End Junior parkrun throughout January.

For today's event, Isabelle, Bea and I were signed up marshal. Consequently, after each of us had been armed with both a lanyard and an official-looking whistle, one of the regular volunteers walked us around to drop us off at appropriate marshalling points (which was very much appreciated!)

Serendipitously, I volunteered onto the same marshalling point as Bea. This meant that I could finally put a face to a name that's been active on GoodGym for several months, and that I could also mangle some basic Hungarian phases to her 😅 Isabelle was slightly further along the course and so wasn't subject to any of my attempts to say something in her own mother tongue (French), but we all re-met at the end of the run to say our goodbyes (in English) and to take a selfie of us all being blinded by the sun 😵👍🏻

If you'd like to take part in next week's Mile End Junior parkrun, details for how to sign up are here. It really is lots of fun to see how happy the kids get when you cheer them on, so do sign up and give it a go! 😄