WEED DIG IT! GOODGYM is now international & weed had a Wales of a time!

36 runners ran 4km to Canton Community Hall Gardens.

What an awesome night!!! I wish we could all jump in Doctor Who’s Tardis and do it again! (SPOILER: You won’t need to do that as our next GoodGym run is next Tuesday! - Sign up to it here by clicking here)

At 6.15pm, 36 enthusiastic and motivated runners gathered ready for the launch of GoodGym Cardiff at Yr Hen Lyfrgell. All excited and curious about what was to unfold as this was the first GoodGym group run to ever take place in Wales!

The evening began with Ben, the GoodGym Cardiff trainer, talking about the 3 ways runners can get involved with GoodGym (1) Coach runs (2) Run Missions (3) Group runs. He spoke briefly about what we had to look forward to on our evening run and the task planned for the evening, whilst being very conscious not to give too many surprises away – Oh Ben you are full of surprises! Also in attendance was the Vice Chair of the University Health Board, Marcus Longley, who spoke about the awesome initiative GoodGym is – Marcus we all loved meeting you!

Ben then led a warm up drill to get us ready to run! Warming up our muscles and dynamic stretches minimizes the likelihood of injury! We stretched our calf muscles, quads, glutes – you name it, we did it! We even managed to talk about opening gates, ushering sheep into pens and closing gates as part of a warm up exercise (Only in Wales, eh?!).

Feeling warmed up we split into two groups; One group led by Ivo, for those runners who wanted to run a longer route, and another group led by Ben. We had two backmarkers for each group; these are runners who will make sure that we stay as a group and that nobody gets left behind! Thank you Ruth and Dom for being our back markers!

We then hit the streets; Our GoodGymming feet pounding the pavements of Cardiff for the very FIRST time! You may be wondering about how GoodGym was received in Cardiff… Well, there were heads turning, whistling, tooting and even cheering! Needless to say Cardiff LOVED it!

After breaking a sweat and glistening beautifully, we arrived at the task site, Canton Community Hall. David and the volunteers from Canton Grows Wild explained what they needed us to do in 30 minutes. Tasks included digging, weeding and laying wood chip, planting 200 plug plants, extending the current disabled access path, shifting 1 ton of gravel to fill up the disabled access path…Okay, that sounds like a lot… BUT… Challenge accepted!

We had Paul and Pat quickly volunteer for the digging task, definitely keen to prove their Spartan strength! Hannah got stuck straight into weeding and planting, doing amazingly. We also had Suzanne who was doing weedly good at weeding – those weeds didn’t stand a chance! Some of us also formed a BUCKET CHAIN! Woo Woo! Loads of runners ‘chipped’ in, passing buckets of woodchip down the chain and pouring it onto the path. With all this going on we had many locals inquisitive, taking a peek at all the fun we were having and what we were getting done! There was a countdown letting us all know how long we had left and when it came to the final 5 minutes everyone pulled together! SUCCESS - We did it :D

Upon completing the task, Lucy, a new member of GoodGym Cardiff, said,

“It’s really amazing how much we managed to get done in 30 minutes. The gardens look completely different and really pretty!”

David, our task organiser, was also really impressed by the enthusiasm of the GoodGym runners and how much was done in the short space of time.

We then ran back in two groups; The group led by Ivo ran through Bute Park where they worked on a couple of sprint drills and the other, led by Ben, also squeezed in a sprint finish down the notorious St Mary’s Street. Ben high fived all of the runners who attended as they came in for the finish - We all had an epic time! Well done guys and welcome to GoodGym Cardiff!!!

We finished our run back at Yr Hen Lyfrgell where we ate welsh cakes provided by Pettigrew Bakery (a local Cardiff business!) – These were delicious!! We definitely did earn them after the evening’s run!

Remember runners to bring your DBS documents next week if you'd like to be paired with an isolated older person (run coach). If you have signed up to become a member then your t-shirt will be on its way to you! When it arrives, bring it along to wear on the group runs, and wear it with pride when on your coach runs and missions too :)

Remember to check out the GoodGym Cardiff Heroes Leaderboard. You can sync your Strava/Runkeeper with your GoodGym account :)

Jon Turtle was the photographer for the GoodGym Cardiff launch.

Remember to share this run report on your Facebook profile :D !

See you all next week!