The long and winding rodent

For 90 minutes of impressive play (and graft), nine super goal-focussed runners took on 4km and cleared a bed of weeds and rogue plants.

No first-timers tonight, but it was great to welcome back Ian, who has been on his travels, this time doing what sounds like a GoodGym task taken to the extreme. Spending time in Argentina with Habitat, Ian worked with a team of volunteers to help families build their own homes. He told us about the challenges they faced, wheeling supplies, materials and equipment across a muddy space each day before they could even get started. All this hard work paid off though, with the foundations fully in place and ready for the next team to come in and help build the walls. What an amazing experience, well done Ian!

Ian also mentioned this race, that's happening tomorrow evening at Norman Park. Short notice, but if you're feeling 10k-ready, you might like to join in!

As this week's task was taking us into Crystal Palace Park, we headed that way for our warm-up, playing a little game of Shark Attack. Great work from our team of sharks, Louise, Hannah and then Jane, who ran hard to try and catch their prey.

It's always lovely to run alongside the lake, sweeping up and around, then to grit our teeth to take on the hills that lie ahead. It felt particularly challenging this evening, in the heat, so well done all! We were met at the Crystal Palace Museum by Mehul, who showed us the area that we were due to clear. As you can see from the photos, it was incredibly overgrown, with sycamore, buddleia, dandelions and grass taking over, in between the plants we were to leave intact. I was very pleased to get a 'before' picture on this task, because the transformation is quite something!

Clocking on

As everyone got stuck in, I wandered over to the 'shed' to collect some more tools and was delighted to have a little behind-the-scenes look inside the space that used to be used for timekeeping, where you can still see 'in' and 'out' painted on the wall.

With heads down, everyone worked incredibly quickly, pulling up weeds, raking away grass, digging up sycamores and sweeping it all away, with Stephen working solidly on wheelbarrow duty. Gathering up the last bits of greenery to be taken to the compost heap, we all paused to watch a local park rat having a good sniff around - eeeeeek! - then asked a few questions about the space, which Mehul kindly answered for us. I think we'll have to come along one Sunday to learn some more!

Run for the hills!

Our position put us in a great spot to run along the top of the park, towards a nice little (but steep) hill, for our fitness session. We did have to pause en route to capture a line-up with the transmitter in the background :) Partnering up, our teams took it in turns to run up and down the hill, with partners working on strength, through walking lunges, push-ups and sitting squats. Feel the burn!

Next week we have a very interesting task lined up, at the Upper Norwood Library Hub, home to the Library of Things. This will be the first time we've built a shed together, so maybe study some flat-pack instructions to gear yourselves up for this construction challenge!

See you soon!