"You can't start a fire,

You can't start a fire without a spark..."

The spark in this case was GoodGymer Graham who was making his debut as Run Director at Bexley parkrun in Danson Park. Graham had put out a call for support from fellow GG-ers and Sarah, Johnny, Susan, Ben and Tim all signed up to help, joining the amazing regular volunteers who are there every Saturday, come rain or shine.

Graham was calm and collected as he organised the volunteers into their roles, gave the main briefing to nearly 300 parkrunners, and oversaw the smooth running of the event.

Sarah W give the first timers briefing then joined Susan and Johnny as barcode scanners. Ben was a timekeeper and Tim took photos around the course.

Goodgymers Sarah L and Martin participated as parkrunners, with Sarah L also taking some photos and Martin later telling us it was his 300th parkrun. Go Martin!

Bravo Graham, you did a great job and we were proud to be there as part of your hi-vis team.

Two Goodgymers formed part of the Bexley parkrun volunteer team this morning as a Timer and Barcode scanner. Task completed we split with Peter going on to do another task in Danson Park and myself learning the ropes as parkrun Event Director.

It was a lovely morning for our GoodGym x Bexley park run takeover!

The attendance seemed low this week, maybe due to the fact that England were playing Australia in the Rugby World Cup quarter final, but this didn’t stop us from being at the start line bright and early. We had most of the volunteer roles covered this morning, which included some pacers.

The first timers briefing was covered by Graham, giving the best of his knowledge of the Bexley parkrun course. After the briefing, he picked up the stop watch ready for his time-keeping duties along with Ben. Along with the runners, they made their way to the start before pressing the all important start button!

Off they went…

Tim and Caz held back behind all the runners as they were tail walking today!

Meanwhile, the barcode scanners got a crash course from Run Director Michelle and got to practice scanning the barcodes before the first finishers came round.

One of the great things about Bexley parkrun is it is a two lapper, giving us a chance to cheer the runners half way round and snap a picture of our pacers!

As the first finishers came in, they were managed by our funnel managers before being scanned.

As our pacers came though one by one followed by the tail walkers we celebrated our good deeds with some cake!

On the way back to the car we noticed a lot of litter, especially lots of empty gas canisters across the pavement and road. We couldn’t walk by and luckily had a litter picker and dog poo bags in the car so spent a few minutes tidying around 50+ canisters, plastic bottles and cans before throwing into a nearby bin.