Dame Emily Park cleaned by Depp-and-able Goodgymmers

Another fantastic turn out tonight as 30 of us set out on a fairly short run over to Dame Emily Park in Bedminster.

The park is cared for by the Dame Emily Park Project (DEPP), a small group of volunteers who work hard to keep the space tidy and the equipment maintained as well as hosting events for the local community.

On arrival at the park we were met by Ursula and Sarah who split us into groups and set about equipping us all with litter pickers and rubbish bags. We were then all assigned different zones of the park and tasked with clearing away all the litter we could find.

With October fast approaching the early evening light is starting to fade fairly quickly and the simple task of navigating around the park was made somewhat more challenging as a result. It was nice to see a few head torches appear and with a couple of our new lights in play we managed to carry on a little longer and finish our task.

Apparently the park had had unexpectedly been cleared early that morning so we were expecting that maybe there wouldn't be too much to do, but Goodgym runners have a real knack for finding litter so it was no surprise to finish up with over 10 full bags of rubbish by the end of our session. Amazing work everyone - DEPP really appreciated all our efforts. It was nice to have some of the skaters in the park helping out too.

Another short run and we found ourselves back at Queen Square with a lttle time to spare so we finished off with a trio of running trains heading around the perimeter. The bursts of speed required to move to the front are a good form of interval train-ing (get it?).

Finally we presented a set of red shoelaces to Kerry for brining along here sister Megan on Saturday and we promised a similar award to Abigail next time for bringing along Sophie tonight.

A very warm welcome to our new runners, Kate and Hollie. Hope you had fun!