Sevens Above! And Beyond!

A Magnificent Seven runners hotfooted 7km to spread the word about fundraising for Above & Beyond.

It was scorchio this morning and it would have been very easy to sit down by the harbourside eating ice cream, yet our devoted crew gathered at Roll For The Soul determined to get out and pound the streets and do good!

Our warm up was a bit of improv, as we were pretty warm already, with a bit of jogging on the spot, hopping whilst twisting and I'm struggling to describe the last bit, but apparently I'd nicked it from Terry The Tornado, who led the warm up at the Bradley Stoke 10k last week!

Today's task was to deliver flyers for Above & Beyond, the local charity raising funds for Bristol city centre hospitals and this is what they are all about:

"Our work touches the lives of more than 800,000 patients cared for in Bristol city centre hospitals each year, as well as the millions of friends and family who visit them, and the 9,000 dedicated NHS staff who care for them. With your help we can make a difference to patient care as we fund above & beyond what the NHS is able to provide.

We fundraise to create welcoming environments, fund innovative research, support staff training and development and provide state of the art equipment. When patients, their families and friends want to say thank you for the care they’ve received at the hospitals, they come to us.

We are the official charity for all hospitals within UH Bristol NHS Foundation Trust"

Our job was to post two flyers through letterboxes in Clifton - one asking people to run the Bristol Half Marathon, the other asking them to cycle to Paris next year, both to raise funds for the charity, in particular to purchase a new 3D ultrasound scanner for one of the local hospitals.

So, considering the heat, we opted for a leisurely run around Queen Square and over to the Waterfront before taking on the climb up Jacobs Wells Road up into Clifton. Heading on up through the Saturday crowds we found ourselves on College Road, where the flyers were waiting for us in the boot of my car.

Splitting into 3 groups, we were able to head off in different directions to avoid any duplication - there were a lot of flyers as I had asked for extra in case we had needed them as a back up plan for Tuesday's group run but as they weren't needed then it looked as we had bitten off more than we could chew for today, particularly as we had a smaller group than usual.

Working in pairs, the groups got through pretty much all of the flyers by the time we re-grouped back at the starting point., despite taking in some of the wonderful sights of Clifton, most noticeably the doors and letterboxes of the big houses in the area. I also came across a road that had been closed by the local residents so that they could have some sort of street games day, including chess, snakes & ladders and twister!

We decided to deliver the remaining flyers as we ran back towards base and had soon polished these off - job done!

It was really great to see everyone smiling and get through the task despite the heat - it was a superb effort! Well done everyone!

Now you may have noticed that Andrew features quite a lot in the photos today? I discovered before we set off that the photos group on my phone showed that Paul, David, Chloe, Deb and Julia are the ones that I have taken most photos of (Fi too apparently) - given that I pretty much only take photos on Saturday morning group runs, this is probably not surprising. Anyway, we agreed that this really needed to be rectified and so Andrew is our centre of attention today!

Really enjoyed being out with you guys this morning, you super troopers you!

Cheers!