Happy birthday to the Croydon Crew

Tonight we ran around 3km to cut, weed, tidy and prune at the Salvation Army

One year of good deeds and running in Croydon – it really doesn’t seem that long since we left BWH with some fanfare from local councillors and headed off to Croydon Arena for some litter picking and bike cleaning. It’s been a wonderful experience getting to know some really lovely runners and finding out more about what is happening in Croydon and all the work put in by volunteers and charities. I think many of us have been surprised at the fantastic work that often goes unnoticed in Croydon and we are privileged to be able to play some part in improving our community.

Okay soppy stuff over and on to what we did tonight. Off we headed to the Salvation Army where Chris greeted us with drinks and 3 different tasks. Weeding an overgrown area behind the building, pruning and tidying up the Memorial garden and cutting branches and twigs up so we could bag them up for the dump. We were accompanied by the lovely sounds of the children’s choir. It was very satisfying to see what we managed to accomplish in around 40 minutes.

After all our hard work we headed off to Wandle Park for a circuit session involving a ladder, large circle of runners, lots of effort, some giggle and some groans. Press-ups and planks seemed to be the least favourite for some reason – no idea why! We then headed back for our cool-down and then of course off to BoxPark for our social – I left at 10pm and a few diehards were still going strong – hope you all got to work this morning!

It was lovely to see Leanne and Helena back for this special run – they were amongst our first runners but then moved and could no longer attend but were able to come back for our birthday. Thanks to Helena too for the birthday banners we displayed with pride on our run. Congratulations to Dom for his fantastic Riga Half marathon result – he set a goal and he achieved it – well done! Thanks also to John for following us around and taking some fantastic photos. I’ll going to try to get the jumping photo as our Twitter profile picture.

On Saturday there’s another Starter session and then hope to see you all next Tuesday at the gorgeous Grangewood Park