The Wombles of Colchester

13 Goodgym runners run to Colchester Canoe Club to clean the banks of the River Colne

On the hottest day of the year 13 dedicated runners met at Leisure World, looking longingly at the water slides and the ice cream shop. But we had a task planned, and as Ian said to David the task owner, “We always show up”.

We always show up.

We had two new runners, so a big welcome to Sue and Ed. Hopefully they will join us again next week.

Onwards, we made our way to Colchester Canoe Club, just 1km away from Leisure World. When we got there, we found a bag of litter pickers and some weird circular things… Trying my best not to look confused, I decided that the circular things were too small to be hula hoops.

But Luckily David from Rivercare arrived to tell us about the risks and thank us for the work we were about to do. And tell us that those circular things were to keep the opening of the bin bags open, to make the litter picking more efficient.

We split into two groups. A group of 4 who would do the litter pick around the canoe pool, and a second group of 9, the roaming litter pickers, or wombles if you will.

As we made our way away from the canoe pond, we didn’t go underground through the tunnel, but instead overground to cross the road and get to the next section of river to clean.

Another little jog with our litter pickers and bin bags and we made our way to riverside walk where Hannah and Tom found a slice of pizza that hadn’t even been touched!!

Yummy

We cleaned all the way to the weir on the north bank of the river before making our way back to the canoe club to return the litter pickers and bin bags. Running with tools and bags was somewhat challenging, but added to the ‘keep fit’ notion, by increasing overall strength by running with extra load.

We kept perfectly to time and had gotten rid of our bags and litter pickers by 8pm. David said his thanks and asked us to come back - I’m sure we will, to do a different section of the river.

Indeed, if you enjoyed the session, there is a BIG CLEAN taking place on Sunday 25th September, where all the Rivercare groups from the Canoe Club to Eastgates will be cleaning along the Colne.

We made our way back to Castle Park, to the band stand to learn downhill running technique. This was a quick fitness session, and gave us a few things to think about ahead of our parkrun this Saturday. Click here to sign up.

A quick run on the first part of the parkrun course with our newly learnt downhill running technique, and then a samba back to Leisure World. It was starting to get dark by the time we were stretching, so we will probably start needing headtorches for future runs.

Don’t forget, next week’s run we’re nettle clearing for Colchester Institute (please bring your own gloves if you have them) and then having our first social in town.

Sign up here.

Run Report by Angela Isherwood