A warm day unfolded for this month's Ealing Mile organised by We Run Ealing. But that also made it a lovely day to help out! 27 runners ran the mile course round our regular park route.

The winter can be a tough time for families who need the help of their local foodbank. The amazing volunteers of Ealing Foodbank do an amazing job but they always need more food donations.

So we partnered with We Run Ealing to hold our own west London version of the national Foodbank Run. A bunch of GoodGym folk and Ealing runners packed our backpacks with items from Ealing Foodbank’s February's Foodbank list and headed off to Gunnersbury parkrun.

After running, walking and volunteering at parkrun, we set off for Ealing Foodbank, some running, some run-walking, some walking. We dropped off our food donations, smiled for a group photo and retired to Momentum Coffee up the road for fantastic coffee and scrumptious cake, a job well done!

Matt, the Run Director at Gunnersbury parkrun gave GoodGym a big shout out at the pre-run briefing as we had 6 volunteers around the course this morning. We also had 6 familiar faces running the course too.

Before the parkrun started, we celebrated Michelle's amazing achievement of 700 good deeds. She is often found running or cycling all over Hounslow and Ealing boroughs to do good, with special guest appearances in other parts of London too, She was given a "700" rosette, which led one parkrunner to ask if it was Michelle's birthday 😳

Back to the parkrun, Steph and Jon were marshalling, Michelle was handing out finish tokens and Kash, Harvey and Sevan were barcode scanning. While Harvey was running the course, Michelle, Kash and Sevan helped set up the funnel, then waited for the first finishers to appear.

The Run Director was very insistent that all of the barcode scanners need to stand in a line, facing in a specific direction and not, in any circumstance, turn to face the funnel. Matt said that he would guide the runners to us. Kash and Sevan stuck to the instructions, waiting to serve the finishers. Harvey, when he joined them, also automatically took his position in the line facing south 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️

First a dribble, then a flood, finishing with a long tail. In all, Michelle's fast fingers dished out 682 tokens which the barcode scanners needed to process. Most of the runners were pleased with their times or if not, at least happy that they'd managed to finish in the unexpectedly warm weather.

At the end of the task, the group headed to the café in the park to eat Michelle's 700th birthday cake and talk about Lithuanian courting traditions 💑