Go hard or go Holmes

13 awesome runners ran 2km to help sort clothes at Clothes For Causes charity shop!

We were a tight knit little group last night and we were joined by one new runner, Christian's friend Alex. Congratulations on your first good deed, hope you enjoyed your first run with us! Christian, many thanks for recruiting!

After a little warm up and chat about milkshakes, we headed straight to the shop as there was a lot to do! We arrived after a mere 5 minutes and were greeted by the always lovely Veronique. She walked us over to the other side of the road (VERY EXCITING) to another shop which looked like a bakery from the outside but inside it was just like someones house minus the furniture. The owner of the property is awaiting planning permission to set up a bakery (yum) and in the meantime has been kind enough to let the space be used to store the charity's winter clothing. How nice!

Bin bags on steroids

There was lots to be done. When I saw the size of the bags, my jaw literally dropped. But it didn't phase these guys! After a few minutes wondering how we would organise things, we eventually figured out that the best thing to do was to just rip open a few bags and get started!

The clothes were to be sorted into categories: womens coats, mens coats, womenswear, menswear, childrenswear and accessories. It was actually quite amazing to see how much had been donated, decent clobber too, and that was only a fraction of it! The pile in the lead after just a few minutes was womens coats. SO MANY COATS. Which is amazing. And I think I'm right in saying that some of them will be directly donated to homeless people to help keep them warm during the winter time :)

It was a frenzy in this room with clothes flying all over the place, with the occasional "heads up" being yelled! But we were getting it done in lightning speed! Bag after bag, the piles were getting bigger by the second!

An interesting discovery...

After about 20 minutes sorting, a bag was emptied out onto the floor containing about 30 Sherlock Holmes hats.... Perhaps it's time to open a new Clothes For Causes shop in Baker Street!

We completed the task with our new headgear and then headed back to the uni for the inaugural Sherlock Relay!

3 teams of 4. The runner wears the hat and runs one lap of 250 meters and hands the hat over to the next person. Fastest team wins!

After all that relay fun, we had a bit of time left so we bumbled round to the fountain and did a few strength based exercises. Single leg squat practice, step ups and tricep dips, 1 minute of each, 2 rounds and we were done!!!

And just in case anyone was wondering, Sherlock Holmes Day is on May 22nd (which is on a Wednesday next year!) so save the date and save your hats.

Great work on the task last night everyone!! It would have taken Veronique and her volunteers hours to do what you did in just 30 minutes so really well done. See you next week!