Volunteering, Milestones, Clubs and Good Vibrations. Burgess parkrun #624 - 29/08/26
- aqasanu
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
After a summer of scorching sun, today’s forming clouds looked ominous. Fortunately, the parkrun gods worked their magic to keep the rain light.
As I did the new runners' welcome, I could see there were a lot of people gathered, 159 to be precise, who joined the 480 regulars for a stacked field of 635 participants.
Today’s Run Director, Shona, gave her address, including a shout-out to Carlos, who was joining the Volunteer 50 Club, a massive achievement, and me joining the Volunteer 250 Club.
I did my first volunteering stint in July 2013. Back then, volunteering, in my head, meant ‘giving up a run’ for the ‘greater good’, but there was hardly any visibility of the volunteer roles.
Fast forward to now, and this milestone achievement means a great deal. My running brings me an endorphin-fuelled high and sense of achievement. My volunteer ‘reward’ is much deeper though. Through volunteering, I’ve forged friendships, developed additional skills, gained more confidence and found community.
The person I most have to thank for helping me to really embrace volunteering is my daughter. Born in 2023, I’d bring her to parkrun in her buggy and do the park walker role. This is somewhat of an ambassadorial role, aimed at encouraging walkers. Listening to others share why they’d decided to come along provided a greater depth, understanding and richness. It showed me how incredibly valuable this Saturday morning activity is for many people and that everyone has a story to tell.
With this understanding and my confidence increasing, I started to volunteer when doing parkrun tourism, helping at junior events and in different countries! I’m thrilled to have joined the Volunteer 250 Club and can’t wait to order some Club merch from the parkrun store 🙂
I now have my sights set on another volunteer challenge, the VADER Challenge (volunteer, alphabeteer, distinct events and roles). Conceived and first completed by Matthew Lloyd, this is truly the best volunteer challenge I’ve seen.
A huge thank you as always to all of today’s 43 people strong volunteer team including the 12 people who volunteered on the day. The event simply wouldn’t have been able to go ahead with you.
Today’s first female finisher was Victoria Cartwright from Kent AC with a personal best and then volunteered as a barcode scanner!
Today’s first male finisher was one of our regulars: Aman Yemane.
A huge shout-out to Chris Leonard. Chris is a member of the ‘Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can’t Run Good’, you can read about this club here. Chris is a member of the Volunteer 500 Club and must have the VADER Challenge in his sights.
Additionally, amongst today’s tourists were Chris Day and Laura Piper, visiting from Bristol. Both are members of the 500 Club, Laura joining two weeks ago. Chatting to them, I realised we’d all run together at Mauerweg parkrun for Unity Day in Germany last year and then 3 days later at Hasenheide parkrun, what a coincidence!
Chris and Laura have completed parkruns all over Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with more adventures planned. Parkrun can literally take you all around the world!
And a shout-out to Burgess regular Martin Hider who had his parkrun birthday on Wednesday. We’re all looking forward to hearing about how being coached by Nick Bester has gone 🙂
Next Saturday will be September, so I’ll be at Southwark parkrun for the start of the 2026 Southwark Slam. This is completing all four parkruns in the London Borough of Southwark (Southwark parkrun, Peckham Rye parkrun, Dulwich parkrun and lastly Burgess parkrun).
Southwark parkrun is always a very welcoming event. It will be their birthday too, so there’s a high possibility there will be cake 🙂
I’ll be looking forward to seeing lots of familiar faces for this year’s Southwark Slam, everyone is of course welcome.
Happy running, walking, or volunteering.
How parkrun began
You can read about how parkrun was created by the founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, a care leaver, in his book ‘One Small Step’, The Definitive Account of how a run became a Global Movement by clicking here.
Absolutely brilliant