You Buddha believe we worked hard tonight! And we litter-ally had so much fun!

This evening 20 runners showed up, eager to get fit do good and have an awesome time at the best place to be in Cardiff on a Tuesday evening, GoodGym!!

With the weather looking quite unpredictable in the days leading up to our GoodGym run we weren’t sure whether or not to expect an influx of rain, fortunately though the good weather held out! – Woopee!

To start the evening, Marina from Run 4 Wales kindly came along and informed us of all the different volunteering opportunities at the Cardiff Half Marathon – Thank you for coming! We then heard from Ellen, Mikey, Lowri and Emma about the missions they took part in over the week – The missions sounded amazing and they really made a difference to the lives of older people, fantastic efforts! Click here and here to read about the missions they took part in. Ben then spoke about his experience running the Bacchus Marathon (which consisted of drinking wine and eating cheese!). We also congratulated runners who took part in parkruns clap clap clap ! Important to mention, we had a new runner this evening too, WELCOME DAVID to GoodGym Cardiff; We love new people running with us, so if you are reading this and haven’t been to GoodGym yet, come along!! Hannah also came along (she last came running with us in 2017), it is so nice to see you again! At the same time as introducing ourselves in the warm up we also had an icebreaker where we all stated our favourite shop; Poundland, Waitrose, Lidl, ASOS and Madame Fromage were all shops that got mentioned (to name a few!). Sean, thank you for the interesting favourite shop suggestion!

This evening there were 2 different tasks… oooo exciting times!

• Ellen led one group of runners to the Samye Foundation (Team consisted of: Lucy, Emma, Darren, Hannah, Adam, Marion, El, Emma, Charlotte, Sue and Peter (In his patriotic Welsh shorts!))
• Ben led the other group of runners plogging around Cathays and Roath (Ploggers included: Mikey, David, Welsh Dave, Lowri, Amy, Keira and Sean)

Group led by Ben: Ploggers of the world unite!

The ploggers set off, with Ben leading and Welsh Dave back marking. As soon as runners made it to Cathays, Ben said “Ploggers, get the gloves, get the bin bags and let’s do this!”. Feeling motivated, plogging got off to an incredible start with runners lunging to pick up litter and shouting ”PLOG!” to warn one another when they were about to stop to pick up litter (to avoid running into one another and knocking each other over). A lot of interesting pieces of litter was found; A Christmas bauble, lots of plastic bottles, cigarette packets, an empty box of cough medicine, fast food containers and more! - Check out some of the runners posing with litter - new profile pic material!

After putting all the bags of rubbish by the bin, runners formed a circle and each put one of their hands in the centre, “Once a plogger, always a plogger” everyone shouted for the whole of Roath to hear!... It was safe to say, the task was now complete!

Before heading back there had time for a fitness session! Leaving everything to chance, Ben grabbed a leaf and identified a top and bottom part to the leaf. If it landed top up then runners had to run up Pen-Y-Lan hill, however if it landed top down then runners would do a time trial of the wreck. Ben let the leaf go, silence was in the air as the leaf tumbled and spun to the ground. It landed… top up! Immediately runners began running up the hill. Pen-Y-Lan hill is a few hundred metres in length and if you run up it too fast then you’ll burn out halfway, however run to slow and you won’t achieve a good time and reap the benefits from the exercise. With good form and powerful strides, everyone conquered Pen-Y-Lan hill! Feeling pushed and good in ourselves knowing that we had done good in our community, we made our way back to Big Moose, passing by a council truck collecting rubbish on Bangor Street. We informed the council workers that we had collected 6 bags of rubbish plogging and that we had left the bags by Pen Y Lan community centre. Great job guys, we’ll go and get them now they said, giving us a thumbs up and a smile.

Group led by Ellen: We moved everything - AND the kitchen sink!

We twelve "sexy runners" headed off to Canton, to help out at the Samye Foundation. We've been there quite a few times before and have been lucky enough to see the transformation they've been through to get their centre and environs in shape. Tonight, Lorraine at the centre was fantastic at responding to Ben's call for a last minute task - and what a task it was! We dismantled a 'shrine' to Buddha in the corner and rebuilt it in a better place (according to feng shui!). This involved taking the buddha statue off the top, moving the plinth it stood on, slab by slab, and rebuilding it about 10 feet away. This will become a lovely Tuscan area, surrounded terracotta pots and more appropriate plants such as lavender and rosemary.

Before this, though we had to clear the area of building rubbish and debris. Pipes, pots, rubble - everything And the kitchen sink! - were moved or piled into Lorraine's car, to be taken by her to the dump the next morning. 4 of us got stuck in at the front of the centre, weeding a small strip of garden along the front ofhte parking lot, as well as between the cracks and crevises amongst the paving stones. This feels like a never ending chore, as I'm sure we've done that 2-3 times before - those pesky weeds! (Although some weeds are just another person's wildlife-haven, in a parking lot it can make the place look a bit untidy and unloved).

Finally, we planted up a lovely holly bush in a garden bed, which is native and will help attract birds and other wildlife to the garden, in due course. Incredible work by all who participated in such a short amount of time! The runners who went to Samye were then kindly offered sandwiches, crisps and humus - yum! And because it was dark and drizzling by then, we headed straight back into town to meet up with the others. A great last minute task that made a realy difference.

WELL DONE!

Awesome efforts by everyone tonight. Don't forget to invest in a head torch and some winter attire so you can stay warm in the colder seasons :) Amy was the official tweet off winner this week Clap clap clap

Runpunstiltskim award goes to me! Come on guys, I wanted you to be extremely punny next week.

Join in next week's group run by clicking here