Supermarket Sweep

Eight fantastic runners braved the mega heat and joined me at Willesden Sports Centre to help out the Canal and River Trust (CRT).

It was another stonkingly hot day but that wasn't going to stop us. With another week at the sports centre we had a shorter run of 3km to get to the Harlesden section of the canal. With everyone gathered we did a quick round of up of the news:

100,000

• We hit 100,000 good deeds last week - read about it here a fantastic achievement by everyone!
• It's the social this week - details to be confirmed but it'll be central London on Thursday!

With that done we were off, despite the heat we kept up a good pace and apart from a random detour through Roundwood Park, and cyclist who was not very up on their highway code we made it safely to Harlesden and met with Jack from CRT.

Watermelon

Jack provided us with some refreshing watermelon and then outlined the task for tonight. We were focusing on the steps leading down to the canal and then a general litterpick.

We split into two groups and got to work. The group on the stairs got straight in there with scrapers and brushes and you could really tell the difference. A number of the locals commented on the work being done and were certainly grateful for it. Meanwhile the litterpickers were working their way up the canal, with a little prodding from me to get every tiny little thing we made a big dent to the litter that was out there. And we found another trolley!

Can we do it?

As we were clearing the last bits of the stairs and getting the last bits of litter done we found that one of the planters was absolutely full of drinks and beer cans. We got everyone with litterpickers together for one last push and blitzed the cans! Fantastic work everyone, there must've been 100 cans at least in there!

With that we gathered all our rubbish bags and the trolley and got it all back to Jack's van before making sure to sanitise our hands and got our group photo! Thanks as ever to Jack for providing us with all the equipment to do our job really well and great effort to everyone - it was hot hard work today!

The run back was quite uneventful but super hard work with the heat still relentless but we all made it and after a stretch we were done and then we went to the pub for a deserved cold drink!

Sign up for next week's run here!

Cheers, Pritesh