on a wet, windy and yuck April Saturday morning 44 runners and walkers hit the Great Salterns parkrun course.

the team of volunteers did a tremendous job with 1 scanner, 1 timekeeper, 1 token giver and 2 marshals being the entire cohort

It was a lovely frosty 🥶 but sunny ☀️ morning at Great Salterns parkrun. 3 GoodGymers volunteered to support one of our local but smaller events. Dave time kept⏱️, Yvonne handed out finish tokens and Jane barcode scanned, then we sorted tokens after. There were quite a few first timers today, maybe 20 out of a field of 65 participants. We did discuss with another parkrunner if event 171 was a significant challenge number such as a Fibonacci or prime number. It must have been too early or we needed more coffee ☕️ or weetabix, as we thought it might be a prime number, but after checking it is actually divisible by 3, 9, 19 and 57! Oh well, at least we managed to time and record the 65 participants correctly! 😀

Tokens and teetering were the game at Great Salterns parkrun this morning! The turn of the weather to the cold end of the scale left a lot of ice patches around trying to upend the runners! 🧊

With Dave handing them out and Sinéad collecting and sorting them, it didn't take long for all 71 tokens to be happily back on their string 🧵

Jen helped clear up at the end so that everyone could get off swiftly to the warmer environments awaiting them 🌡

Goodness me, the first task of 2025 couldn't have got off to a more chaotic start, with both our original plans to volunteer at Southsea parkrun, and our back-up event at Havant being scuppered due to high winds and squawly rain.

I think Jason, the RD, was very pleased to see some last minute volunteers rock up, especially as all the local cancellations meant Great Salterns set a new attendance record, with 239 runners and walkers today.

Judy's Morecambe and Wise moves when passing the marshals brought a lot of joy to the morning, especially when she was closely followed by a group of runners dressed as ABBA!

You could probably all tell that marshalling isn't my strong point, with erratic dancing to keep warm and attempting some weight-lifting with the exceptionally large marshal cone. I did hit 10,000 steps shortly after parkrun, so those dance moves counted for something! Dave's marshal point was certainly a more chilled out place to be!

Superb effort by everyone this morning, that weather was absolutely ridiculous!

I helped at Great Salterns Parkrun, by marshalling at one of the corner points.

Cheerful runners, energetic dogs and beautiful winter trees. What's not to like?

Marshalls, Scanners and Tokens were all taken care of by GG at Great Salterns parkrun this morning.

Whilst Dave had 3 DoE students on the parkwalk and tailwalk roles. He learnt loads about Minecraft!