A nice round 30 runners headed off in the evening of Tuesday to head back to Millpond School. This primary school has been building several flower beds for the kids to learn the fine art of gardening. Last time we were there, we shifted a massive amount of compost to start to fill the beds, as well as stapling liners into the tubs and also clearing some old flower beds. One item in the flower bed was... THE STUMP!

Chris Lewis took the stump's refusal to shift very personally and he even threatened to come back to the school in his own time with his weapon of choice, the mighty mattock, to defeat this foe. This was the return match, but more on this later...

It was a fantastic evening with a couple of new runners in the mix, and we had a swift and slightly downhill run to the school, with a gentle breeze keeping us cool. We got to the school and set to our various tasks - moving tyres, shifting more compost, digging over more flower beds, raking up grass and generally making the flower beds that were yet to be filled...er... filled.

It turned out that it doesn't take long for 10 people to move about 25 tyres, so with that job complete, those 10 got stuck in to other tasks, but with one problem; we were a bit short on tools.

Fortune was kind of on our side with what we dubbed 'the tiny spades of glory' - kiddie sized spades, trowels and the like could at least keep us digging and moving.

Back to that stump...

I'm very sorry to report that the score so far is Stump - 2 - Chris nil. Has it beaten him? I don't think so, but it is toying with him and I think has become a bit of a GoodGym nemesis!

We reluctantly left the stump (and almost left Chris bashing away at it!) for a fast run back to central Bristol where we had a lovely stretch and cool down.

Team, remember that the kids at Millpond School want to say thanks to us in person and we've been invited to their open day - once we have the date we'll let everyone know (and we hope that they're going to sing us a song and give us fairy cakes!). But before that, I'll say thank you and next time I see you, I'll sing you a song.