Three for the Price of Run

On a terrific Tuesday evening 18 ace runners and 1 wonderful walker covered the tiny distance from The Folk House to Brandon Hill, where our task was to cut epicormic growth from the base of a host of trees that are in the park.

At first it seemed that our 'it never rains for GoodGym' adage was to be put to the test - 5 minutes before hail stones the size of walnuts (really, they were huge!) were heralding the end of the world. The sky was black and it seemed that we'd be both cold, wet, and bruised when we headed out. But fortune favours the bold and as we headed off, the skies cleared and we were bathed in golden sunlight as we ran up and up and up some more to get to the shed where the tools were kept for our task.

We split in to two groups - the brute force group who were responsible for simply pulling off the growths, and the tooled up group (as featured venturing in to a thicket of leaves mostly in the photos!) who were tasked with tackling some growths that were about 6 years old. We set to it, with the odd accompaniment of a small group of kids who were having a splendid and messy time rolling down the hill on a skate board and sometimes falling off with much yelling and laughing.

The weather held all the way through, although the odd rumble of thunder made us a little wary. We did a good 40 minute stint of work as there were lots of trees to be denuded, and then met back up at the top of the hill for some squats, lunges, press ups and running drills. Safe, sound and dry, we headed back to the Folk House for a bit of a stretch and cool down. A big big thank you to Fraser who both ran with us and provided us with a great task in a beautiful part of Bristol. It's guaranteed that we'll be back this time next year for more of the same.

Just to explain the name of the run - we (as in I!) was delighted to learn that we have two GoodGymers called Alex Price. What are the odds! And then we found that we also have a Gareth Price too! The Price truly is right.

Lastly, a HUGE and MASSIVE congratulations to Gary for making this his 50th GoodGym run. A black t-shirt will be ordered and our gang of runners in black is growing. Who will be next?