The Time Bandits

A series of fortunate events led us to carry out unexpected good deeds in Cardiff this evening

The unexpected rainy weather in Cardiff through a pretty large spanner in the works. Rachel, the headteacher of St. Alban's Primary where we were planning to run this evening, had planned for us to do some outdoor painting. However rain made the conditions unsuitable for painting... DOH! Fortunately though, one our very own runners Emily told us about her role within the non-for-profit organisation 'For Cardiff'. Emily is one of the keyholders for St. John's Gardens. The keyholders help the gardens stay open for longer hours that they otherwise would. Emily told us that the benches in the gardens could do with a clean and the floors could do with a litter pick.

ith a completely new and unexpected task ahead, we were eager to get running. Before running to the task, though, we had to do a head count and get warmed up. The head count consisted of runners introducing themselves, stating their headcount number (1,2,3,4, etc.) and then saying their favourite type of cheese out loud (why?... why not!... Now we all know who likes brie, stilton, cheddar, halloumi etc.). We also acknowledged the runners who took part in Parkrun (Mali, Llion and Ben), and the runners who took part in a mission over the weekend (Michael an Erika) - You can click here to read the mission report. To warm up we played a game which involved Ben telling everyone the names of the colleagues he used to work with (He definitely made these names up...!) ... Mr Right Hand, Mr Dizzy, Miss High Knees... Every time Ben said his colleague's name e.g. Mr Right Hand, the the runners had to perform the corresponding actions. Another game followed this which involved runners working on their coordination and agility. For this game, runners competed against one another to tag the knee of their partner without getting their own knee tagged. The winner was the first to 3 tags on their partner.

Unfortunately there were no new runners to welcome to GoodGym this week. Bring a friend next week and get youself a FREE RED LACE. It's an incredible prize... Winning a red lace means you can become a trend setter and have two different coloured laces; Rumour has it they make you run faster.

It was then time to run! Ben led the 0.25 mile run to St. John's Gardens...

At St. John's Gardens

After a very short run we made it to St John's Gardens! Emily opened the gates to the gardens and welcomed us inside. We then kitted ourselves up with gloves, rubbish bags, brooms and gloves and got stuck in after Ben reminded everyone about the important H&S rules of liter picking.

• Martin and Lucy began sweeping up the leaves. Emily was swept away with the speed at which they worked.
• Lowri, Lucy and Adam used cloths to clean the benches.
• The rest of the team picked up litter in the gardens.

Interesting pieces of litter alert - There was an abundance of interesting rubbish finds, these included; Adam finding an Armani watch that had engraved on it "Love you always, Beth"... we speculated how it ended up in a bush, Lowri found an electronic tag... opppss that's not good, Mali foun an empty bag of chocolate and an empty coca cola bottle... Mali, I have to say that I wished you'd found a full bag of chocolates and a full bottle of coke, and Sophie found a trove of Roald Dahl books.... unfortunately they were soaked through and had woodlice crawling over them.. It definitely wasn't light reading given how much the books weighed soaked in water.

So, as mentioned, during the task we found a electronic tracer tag... We thought someone may have lost this, and we therefore knew the best thing to do was to hand it into the police. This inevitably became our next stop, and off we ran to Cardiff Central police station to hand it in... Mikey and Peter handed it in... good lads!

Off to Cardiff Central Police station we go

After handing in the electronic tag we made our way over to Alexandra park. Ben told everyone about how beautiful the gardens look in Spring. It was also time for a fitness session! Ben got everyone partnered up. He then instructed the each partner to run in opposite directions around the inside perimeter path. As the path formed a loop inevitably they would meet again. When the runners met one another, they had to high five each other, turn around and then run back in the direction they had run from.

Time to get our plog on and head to the assault course in Bute park

After the fitness session everyone put 1 glove on aka. we 'gloved up'. Mikey then bellowed "now do your best Michael Jackson impression". and some of the runners did a discrete moonwalk!

We then continued running and picking up litter as we went... aka. Plogging!

We plogged until we reached the assault course in Bute Park. We then did the assault course quickly... Adam H mastered the challenging swinging log - nice work.

And then, finally, we headed back for an 8pm finish.

What an awesome run

It was fair to say that this completely unexpected run ended up being really enjoyable! Thank you Emily for coming up with a last minute task for us to do!

Great Scott! The winner of this week's tweet off was Martin Graff

Well done Graffinator - Hopefully this is the start of a winning streak for you! You've moved up on the leaderboard to second place. Here are the current standings on the tweet off leaderboard -

• LM 7
• MG 3
• EW 2
• NS 2
• MJ 2
• DRN 2
• BA 1
• NI 1
• AG 1
• WD 1

RunPunStiltskin award

This week's RunPunStiltskin winner is Mikey. Mikey combined the finding of the armani watch and the electronic tag to name this run... The TIme Bandits.

There is also a film called the Time Bandits... It is rated as 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to watch the trailer.