Race of Spades

Another wonderful evening in Bournemouth, and with the promise of a bit of gardening for the first time this year as a task we had a great turn out.

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lovely people decided to come and do some exercise and make their a community a better place. If only there were a GoodGym in every city!

Tonight we welcomed Marianne to her first group run. She saw us at our meet up location one evening in our funky GoodGym shirts and was intrigued by us...looked it up and signed right up! Welcome on board, you were amazing and did a great thing this evening. Hope you feel good about it! See you next week!

Grace brought along her lovely flatmate Roshana to her first taste of GoodGym. Well done on giving it a go, we hope you come and hang out again next week!

It was also great to have Aoife back after some time off...please don't leave us again!

We were also very lucky to have a sneak peak into Poole GoodGym and the lovely lady who will be leading things there. Esther is amazing and we may not let her go....you guys over in Poole are very lucky. That will take place on Tuesday evenings and should kick off possibly in 6 weeks...maybe...possibly. Welcome to the family Esther!

Our task was just up the road so the gang begged for an extended run rather than taking it easy....such super motivated people, always great to run with them. They never complain, love a challenge and always take the difficult options. After a warm up to get us ready for things to come (including working on our people dodging) we headed down the gardens at a gentle pace, catching up with those around us and looking forward to what lay ahead. Rather than continue along the prom the gang were desperate to run up the Zig Zag onto the Overcliff, so we did that with ease and then posed for photos at the top, even though we could of kept running of course. Then we headed down the hill and Sarah, Abi and Neil did some downhill flying jumps cause they had that much energy. We hit the bottom of the hill and rather than taking the easy option along the flat prom the gang begged me to let them run up the BIC hill that takes no prisoners....I of course obliged.... At the top after taking in the views, and totally not being out of breath we headed to the next Zig Zag only this one was downhill and allowed for Caprice to take some great snaking shots with the Pier in the background.

At the bottom we headed along the prom and over to the Harvester where the gang again decided to push themselves....they ran up the long stairs to the top of the cliff....there's quite a lot... After all that it was time to run to the school and do some actual work.... Lorraine and Emily were there to meet us with all the tools and smiling faces. We hadn't seen them since last year around this time where we helped them in their garden. The school ended up winning the GOLD award in the Bournemouth in Bloom competition!

We were tasked with clearing out one flower bed completely....and there was a lot in there. The other one just needed some weeding. After handing out some gardening gloves, the gentlemen were....gentlemen and let the ladies have first dibs of them. Who says chivalry is dead???

The team split up into two groups, armed with spades, forks, shovels and good looks they cracked on. With only 40 minutes to get the job done they were on a mission. Tough ground that was dry like Neil's wit, was not obstacle for them. Ripping out dead plants, massive bushes and finding spoons, tennis balls and little play cars. Weeding in the other flower bed wasn't much easier as plants were growing in between in each other and that needed a little more dexterity. But these guys are GoodGym Bournemouth and they mean business...40minutes later and as you can see in the photos they had made those flower beds their b... own.

After a quick tidy up we all headed the short route back to Flirt for a stretch and debrief.

Well done everyone! Hope you had a great time. Well done on those hills and stairs, your butts will thank you for it this summer! hahahha

Thank you Caprice for backmarking and taking photos too....all after a 13 hour shift and 3 hours sleep. We love you!!!

See you all next week!

Good luck to Nicola and Aoife in their Triathlon this weekend! Try not to make others feel bad mmmkay...