This mild Saturday morning both Rebecca and I volunteered to be High Viz heroes at Norwich parkrun.

Thousands wake up to start their weekend off with the best and only way.... a parkrun at 9am of course!

Rebecca and I get to the park at 8:30am (only half an hour earlier than everyone else and we are finished around 10-10:30am)

At the bandstand we meet with the other volunteers who have already emailed: norwichhelpers@parkrun.com to offer their time. You need to let the volunteer organiser know which Saturdays you can make that month. One Saturday is fine or you can do all of them!!

A few reasons to volunteer:

*You love parkrun? so show some love back by volunteering and keeping it going!

• Injured? Keep sociable by cheering on your parkrun community. Use parkrun of a way of getting back to running (worked for Paul Sinton Hewitt!)

• Have a race on Sunday? Take a rest on the Saturday by volunteering.

*Volunteer so that a regular volunteers can run!

*Get to know what happens behind the scenes at parkrun and experience different roles and tasks.

As usual all volunteers were briefed and roles decided. Both Rebecca and I were on the finishing funnel.....(a chance for us to double up on the bossing! only kidding!) The finishing funnel is a great role. As marshals here we get to congratulate and encourage the runners to keep going after they have crossed the finish line. By keeping going (thank you to all that kept jogging through) this ensures that there is no waiting and the timekeepers can keep record of everyone that comes through rather than a huge crowd all jostling! Another great thing about being on the finishing funnel is that you get to see the determination, exhaustion and relief on everyones faces. The humour is also great!

The run director this week was Mr Richard Polley, he calls for first timers to brief them on how Norwich parkrun works, there was around 30 first timers to Norwich today which was fab. As the 511 runners set off we cheer our fellow Goodgymmmers, Brad, Emily and Liz as they cross the bridge, how many times? ......FOUR! Rebecca was pretty spot on with numbers for the 'guess the amount of runners sweepstake' she was trying to start!!

Off to the finishing funnel we go to see all 511 come through. Everyone was super friendly and said thank you to Rebecca and I for marshaling. We collect the cones and head to the finishing token table to start ordering the tokens.

A lovely morning volunteering. If you would like to volunteer next time then email: norwichhelpers@parkrun.com

This volunteer time can be counted as a Good Deed as its around 2 hours of volunteering time. If you volunteer 25 with parkrun you will be get a beautiful purple 25 t-shirt! oooh er!