Many Scrappy Returns

A top thirty runners ran to the Children's Scrapstore to help sort out lots of stuff in their warehouse.

There was a buzz in the air this evening as we gathered for our usual Tuesday evening run - it could have been due to the fact that we had got so many newcomers with us this evening (a big welcome to Richard, Gabby, Li, Lucy, Matt and Vicky and welcome back to Ellen!) or that everyone remembered where we were heading to and the fun that laid in wait for us!

After an introduction and welcome to all, particularly the new faces, and our favourite farmyard warm up of opening gates, shooing in chickens and then closing them in, we split into two groups, to head off to St Werberghs, where we were met by the fantastic Kelly, who explained what the Children's Scrapstore is all about.

Their aim is to help improve play opportunities for children and young people and to reach as many children and young people as possible. They have an Aladdin’s Cave of low-cost, varied and abundant scrap materials for creative play – safe surplus resources collected from business and industry. One of the main reasons for the success of Children’s Scrapstore is the fact that it is situated in an area of industry and business which regularly produces suitable waste. The scrap is displayed in the warehouse ready for playworkers and teachers to take back to their groups - where the fun begins!

Actually, this is not quite true - the fun actually begins when we arrive and get to sort through the stuff that has been donated, helping to make it safe and suitable for use for kids in their school playgrounds.

I feared that we had stumped them this time when Kelly said that she hadn't been expecting so many of us, but in true Scrapstore style, she managed to come up with a huge variety of tasks that our intrepid team got well and truly stuck in to!

These included:

• Thin tube cutting and sorting
• Thicker tube sawing
• Slicing twine off bobbins
• Hot knife rope cutting and tying
• Removing all the packaging from a box of Trunkies
• Cutting material that looked like graph paper - Alex and Caroline thought this was a great excuse for a Toga Party!
• Deboxing and removing wires from old phones and computer keyboards - an old favourite and a GG rite of passage!
• Cord cutting
• Cutting netting to hammock size
• Paint stirring
• A bit of good old shifting

This is the first time that I had led a run here and it was great to wander round and seeing all the different tasks being performed, rather than just concentrating on one particular task (although Alice and Vito managed to rope me in to err... tying the rope that they were soldering on with!) - what was really great was seeing how people automatically went and found another task to help with once their own was finished - brilliant teamwork gang.

I also now appreciate how difficult it is to wrap up this task when everyone is enjoying themselves so much!

Nevertheless, after managing to prize our hard working horde away from their treasures and a group photo with the now usual props and clothing, we whisked ourselves off back to Queen Square for a cool down with stretches - no time for drills tonight I'm afraid - again, not unusual after a trip to the scrapstore.

Back in town, we celebrated the achievements of the past week, including Matt's 100th parkrun and PB, our Saturday good deed with the Mayor and the awesome achievements of those taking part in the Bristol 10k, with lots of PBs being reached.

We wished good luck to all those flying of to Latvia this weekend, to run either 6k, 10k, Half Marathon or Marathon as part of the GoodGym invasion of Riga - you will hear Red Thunder!

As announced, there are group runs this Saturday and next Tuesday - the more the merrier so please sign up for those if you are free.

And there are missions on Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st, so if you are mission verified, then check those out on the website.

And we all wished Paul a Happy Birthday, celebrating with some fab cake made by his kids and, of course, pink wafers.

Like the task itself it really was a case of Many Scrappy Returns! Thanks for the pun, Richard, winning a close run vote back at Vivo.

Thanks to Paul for leading one of the groups tonight and to Alice and Mel for backmarking.

And thank you all for coming along - you really do make good things happen! For the newcomers, we really hope that you enjoyed your first GG experience and we look forward to seeing you all again soon!