A beautiful autumnal morning to spend out in Old Deer Park in Richmond taking on marshalling duties for ParkRun. Excitingly, five members from GoodGym Oxford joined in the running fun too as part of their ParkRun tour. It made for a lot of GoodGymers in one place!

The team showed up ready to encourage runners and walkers around the route, taking on timing duties, way pointing, walking, tail marking and enthusiastic encouragement!

Rebecca is a regular there and kindly helped to organise the task, ensuring Area Activator Liz had chance to speak to the group about GoodGym before they set off. Hopefully we will be able to welcome some regular ParkRunners for a session with us soon too.

Three stunning laps around the park later, including some musical accompaniment from a man practicing the saxophone in the park, everyone had finished.

After the run, everyone headed for coffee, cake and chat, a perfect end to the start of the weekend!

An overcast and chilly morning wasn’t enough to stop 164 runners turning up at Old Deer Park to run 5km. A great morning was had by all with 26 personal bests and 23 new runners at Old Deer Park.

Today’s first finisher was Kris Davidson who has completed 131 parkruns and was representing Ranelagh Harriers with an amazing time of 18:32.

17 Goodgymers turned up to support the event: Pre Event Set Up: Nicky and Phil, travelling from Vauxhall to arrive at 8am was no mean feat, but they walked the course with Kate & Holly to ensure potholes were marked, branches moved and most importantly that the conditions were deemed safe for the run to go ahead.

Marshals: Africa and Ellen, battled in with a fever (Africa) and having never attended a parkrun before (Ellen) these two provided encouragement to all the runners on their three lap run.

TimeKeepers: Eva and JP, proving there's actually nothing scary about timekeeping, they delivered a perfect set of results whilst encouraging a huge amount of sprint finishes!

Finish Tokens: Jen and Holly, handing out tokens and getting to congratulate every finisher made up for the numb fingers!

Barcode Scanner: Gavin and Nat with Number Checker: Lorna, made sure no one who brought their barcode went home without their time.

Tailwalker: T, made sure no one came in last and had a great chat whilst she was at it!

Post Event close down: Helen, completed a fourth lap of the course to make sure all the equipment got collected in ready for next week.

Report Writer: Oliver, capturing the whole event with words and pictures for the parkrun website.

Token Sorters: Lenka & David, putting all the tokens back in order for next week.

Running Marshals: Richard, making a very welcome appearance back in his goodgym t-shirt after a years break, cheered in the runners adding to the celebratory atmosphere at the finish funnel.

Run Director: Kate, makng sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing, once I'd started the run with a very satisfying blow of the whistle, I was mostly left to clap and cheer on the runners, a favourite pastime of mine!

We had a good handful of runners out on the course too, representing in their shirts. We enjoyed cheering them round, hopefully they enjoyed the run!

Once our Tailwalker came through, the course was packed up and we all headed round to the cafe for tea, cake and chats!

On a beautiful sunny, blue skied morning, 10 runners met at Old Deer Park (ODP) to volunteer and run at parkrun. As we all gathered at the start area, there was much excitement about #GGSuperSaturday and the 3 missions we, at Goodgym Richmond, had planned.

Lenka got us off to a great start, as she was in charge of the Pre-Event Setup. She set off around the course, to mark the corners with stakes and arrows, so that everyone knew where they had to go.

Laura and Africa followed, to stand at corner's on the course, making sure everyone was going the right way. The run director called everyone together for a quick briefing and I was given a few minutes to talk about Goodgym, our tenth birthday and what we do. We let everyone know we'd be staying for tea after the run and promised to be on hand to chat to anyone who wanted to know more.

As everyone headed to the start line, Adam our tailwalker, took his place at the back of the pack, in true Goodgym style, making sure no one got left behind. He even carried the Goodgym flag aloft as the run set off! With David, Lenka & Kate running the course, our remaining Hi-vis heroes were left to find their places before the first of the runners started coming in.

Jen (wo)manned the finish funnel, helping to hand out the finish tokens. T was number checker, making sure that the timers & finish tokens were in sync whilst also noting down any missing or unscannable barcodes, and Salwa was given the very important job of collecting in all the finish tokens once they'd been scanned.

Out on the course, Laura & Africa did a wonderful job of encouraging and supporting the runners on their way round. As the course is made of of three laps, we had plenty of opportunity to see them, which was great!

Well done to David, who came second, and Lenka, who was the second female. We know it's not a race, but you two were flying! Before we knew it we were clapping in Adam and the run was done.

Christina, having been sent round the houses by google maps, turned up just in time to help us pack up the equipment and carry it round to the cafe.

At the cafe, we got drinks, chatted to some of ODP's regular parkrunners and admired some of the lovely parkrun dogs. To Jen & the run directors delight, we also went the extra mile and sorted the tokens!

We finished just in time to head off to our second mission of the day... all in all, a 'Runderful' start to #GGSuperSaturday.