A day in the early-life of parkrun......volunteers
We have become addicted I think is the word, to parkrun. Lesley is a 'long term' jogger and I am relatively new to it. We are VW60-64 and VM70-74** respectively. Active firstly in our neighbouring Aylesbury parkrun and we also, by means of our static "holiday" caravan, frequent some of the Brighton area parkruns or to be precise, the Hove Park, Hove Promenade and Lancing parkruns to name but a few in the Brighton area. We tour to other venues if we are nearby but do not consider ourselves part of the 'hardcore' tourists that travel the world! Saying that, Australia and New Zealand have been on our 'bagged' parkruns, when over there on our holidays and yes, we did try to be near one on a Saturday even if it was a little out of our way!
All of these runs have many things in common but the spirit and roles of volunteers are identical throughout, with the exception of a few oddities such as our other neighbour; Tring Park, where they have a specific role for cow-herding marshalls! (see their website if you don't believe me) and a few, along the beach runs, have tide watching marshals! 
Turning up on a cold dark winter's morning when you aren't even running takes some doing but believe us, it's worth it, even if it's pouring with rain and blowing a gale as it did this June!
Our picture shows the soggy aftermath of said event 38. Following our volunteering roles (RD, event set-up, marshal and bar-code scanner)! All the hi-vis were soaking and needed drying out ready to be folded and packed into the bags and boxes ready to be handed on to next week's volunteer RD. I hope the weather is more seasonal for them and less like Autumn. The rain didn't deter and we had good numbers of parkrunners followed by results processing with the dodgy internet, in the cheerful Cafe in the Woods accompanied by the usual coffee & cake.
** moved up an age category since this report
