Mud, Sweat & Volunteers

There won't be too many evenings where a GoodGym run takes place in 30 degrees... but today was one of them.

The fact that the runs were long distances too didn't help the situation.

We had a new runner in Israel this week.

There were 2 tasks to this week so the group was split in half. I shall start with details of my half of the group and then I'll pass over to Katy who led the other half of the group to their task.

My lot went off to Dussindale Primary School, which included a nice 11.5km round trip. The moob sweat had started before I'd even left so you can imagine the state I was in by the time I got there. A small apology to the group as well for making it our fastest group run yet... oops.

A couple of teachers had kindly waited around after school for us and when we arrived we were fighting for the water like a bunch of deluded dehydrated dogs... I'm not sure what that term means but I just made it up.

There were 3 tasks for us to do there - paint the benches, dig up the flower beds and sweep up. As always the team assembled to the different tasks (even I did some digging to the disbelief of the other group) and before long we had transformed the area. The benches looked amazing, the flower beds were weed free and the children's area was swept clean.

Once the job was done we re-assembled and pretty much pelted it back to The Forum... over to Katy, who was fully leading a group on her own for the 1st time.

My group headed to Frere Road Community Centre on an 8km hilly return route.

We were met by a lovely lady called Christine who welcomed us with bottles of water. She showed us what needed doing and explained that they wanted to spruce up the outside area in time for their Norfolk Day celebrations on Friday.

We quickly got stuck in and although there were only 8 of us we soon made a visible difference. Christine who is in her 70's apologised for standing and watching us instead of getting stuck in and helping out. We explained that we were used to it with Hitch supervising...cheeky!

After a good 40 minutes of hard work and running out of bags for the rubbish and leaves we'd collected, we stopped for a quick photo before heading through the hidden hills of Norwich back to The Forum.

Next week we are delivering Age UK Norwich magazines. There will be various distances - short, medium and long.