Waterway to spend a rubbish evening

Last night we had 16 runners embrace the light evenings and join us for a clean up down on the canal on behalf of the Canal & River Trust. This included Danny from Brent who visited us on his GoodGym tourism trail and one brand new GoodGymer Georgia, who despite claiming not be be a runner at all smashed it and kept up right at the front all evening!

We started our run by utilising the parks on the way to the canal in Hanwell and performing some group sprint intervals in file formation through the beautiful Walpole and Lammas parks. After that I found the group were feeling pretty speedy last night but I encouraged everyone to go at their own pace with regular regroups along the way so we didn't loose anyone en route. I think everyone had a great workout on the way down as we were all pretty warm by the time we arrived which with all the recent cold whether felt pretty nice for a change!

We were welcomed by Jack and his van full of tricks and this time he had some more litter picking tasks for us to complete. His pre task check along the stretch we work on had unfortunately confirmed that the loch we spruced up on our last visit had once again been subject to a party or two and needed some serious attention! He also had the infamous bat detector to hand to see if we could find any activity this time round after failing to find anything last year.

Loched and loaded...

Loaded with our equipment we headed for the loch a little further down from our meeting point and with the towpath being a little muddy from all the recent rain we stuck to the path inside the park on the way there, keeping everyones feet relatively dry for now...

Special mention this week to Ronan who joined us back at GoodGym after being injured for a little while! It was great to see him back and as a treat he was on bat patrol while the rest of the group split up to cover as much ground and litter picking opportunities as possible.

The evening proved to be not very fruitful in bat activity although Ronan thinks he heard a few maybes, but what we lacked in bats we more than made up for in litter picking! A huge pile of bags collected between us and this stretch of canal and the loch looks a much nicer place for a spring stroll!

The walk on the towpath back to our starting point proved to be a little muddier so apologies to those wearing shiny new trainers on the run (sorry Jenni!) but everyone did amazingly well so a big thank you for coming out last night!

After the run we all headed to the pub for our monthly social and this week we also celebrated my 50th GoodGym deed with cake and a couple of drinks!

It's been an amazing journey and I can't wait to complete the next 50!

Happy Running!