It's in the sediment don't you know!

A late change to tonights task which was due to be a litter pick on Melbourne Parade. A scout of the area yesterday provided very few areas of litter so a change of plan was needed. Seven runners ran a combined 7k overall tonight. We met at the usual place in Anglia Ruskin Uni, it was good to meet Paul for the first time for myself and the regular faces of Adam, Fay, Leanne, Jenny with a welcome back to Cara after an extended rest from her first marathon in Brighton. Our first objective of the evening was to take part in this weeks Goodgym Olympics #GGOlympics2018. The criteria was to do s 1k challenge run. We also had to record it on Strava, prompted by Rachel who seems to love a map! There was a perfect place for us to draw the GG logo on Strava in Melbourne. We set off up First Avenue into Kings Road to our chosen route for the GG logo, and i have to say it was just perfect as you will see in the photos, pretty pleased with that so job done. The main part of todays revised task was to tackle an important part of the through route in the park that had flooded a number of weeks ago and left a huge amount of sediment on the floor in the underpass. When the river rises the underpass is prone to flooding as it is lower than the river level. This underpass is the main cycle and pedestrian route and is also on the Chelmsford parkrun course and a we are all parkrunners we would be helping parkrun and all other park users. We arrived at the underpass and I quickly zipped off to grab some shovel and brooms and I also had some Watermelon ready for some refreshment which was well needed and deserved before we set to clearing the silt up. Jenny and Cara grabbed the brooms and soon created a dust storm in the underpass, Adam, Paul and Leanne started shovelling the silt outside onto the grass verges with Fay on lookout duty for cyclists and runners/walkers. A few swaps of roles and great effort by everyone we cleared most of the silt away ensuring a free path for everyone and parkrun on Saturday. Then it was time for the run back to the Uni and a stretch down and a great job well done.