On the Verge of Greatness

An AMAZING 68 runners ran 3km to help completely clearing two large sections of verge for Bedford fields!

Our first task had high expectations, and boy did you all live up to them!

It was a bumper turnout for our first task, and everyone was happy, smily and chatty, spending bit of time getting to know each other before we got underway. We had a lovely send off from Councillor Rafique, and after a quick warm up of 'Jump left, jump right, jump in, jump out' it was time to see if Leeds was ready for GoodGym!

As the task was so close, the runners went for a nice lap of the park before the light faded, while the walking group headed straight for the task. It was tough to keep so many people together, so we split into two, with Aron at the front of one group, and GG Yorkie Trainer extraorinaire Egg at the front of the other group. Grace and Heather were our backmarkers.

We arrived at the task and Ian gave us a quick pep talk - our tasks were:

• To rip out any weeds/nettles/brambles out of two overgrown areas.
• Move everything we'd pulled out further up the path.
• Add the "woody stuff" (a technical term) to the dead hedge, with everything else thrown over the hedge to rot down behind it.
• Another small group headed off to do some heavy lifting moving some big logs.

After some early apprehension about just pulling out nettles and brambles protected only by some gardening gloves, everyone got really involved and there was a whir of activity. There were people pulling, chopping, running this way and that, and lots of motivating each other!

"It's like I'm back training with the paras here!" Ian, task owner, Bedford Fields

Everyone pitched in with whatever tools were available and we really started to make some progress, even if some people did have a bit of trouble with the tools...

"This rake is really mugging me off" Gillian, GoodGym HQ

When the log shifters rejoined the group we really picked up the pace, and we made some massive progress. As our 45 minutes came to a close, we swept the path and cleared away all the tools, before Egg led a round of birthday squats for Trainer Aron's birthday.

It was just a short run back to base, but we stopped off for a bit of a fun cone workout to really get our sweat on! Everyone worked really hard on the range of exercise and there were loads of synchronised squats and rope climbs which was lovely to see.

After we collected all the cones, we took a gentle jog back to HPBC, where we had a nice stretch and (for some of us) a well earned drink, with the warm glow of a good deed done (or was that nettle rash?)

Thank you all for such an amazing launch, you're all fab. Go give each other a cheer!