Ben Mason


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Doing good since March 2014


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Ben Mason
Ben Mason went on a group run

Tue 22nd Sep 2015 at 6:30pm

Prancing in the moonlight

Last Tuesday 25 lovely runners headed off to Quakers Garden to help Sara at Incredible Edible continue to transform this once dingy space into Bristol's first edible garden.

We had a couple of new runners - Olivia who started at Vivo, and Ed who mysteriously appeared at some point in the and joined in the task and the run at the end. Big welcome, guys! I really hope you had a good time.

The initial run was not that long, just a chance to wake up the legs and the lungs. I wanted to get us to the garden before night started to close in, and it became too dark.

As always with this kind of task, the magnitude of the work to do looked pretty intimidating. Armed with brand new gloves and a couple of pruners, the majority of the group fell upon the unloved flower beds with the aim of uprooting as much vegetation as possible, leaving it empty and open for the planting of fruit, veg and herbs. Another part of the group grabbed various tools and set about digging up some stubborn stumps.

After about 30 minutes of clearing, we'd not only make a HUGE dent on the undergrowth, but also the usual random collection of odd items had been amassed. These included a bag of costume jewelry, a bong, and a jar of caviar (which apparently stunk!). I will now therefore proceed to insert a variety of fish puns in to this report...

Task done, it was time to leave that plaice and split in to two group(ers). Group one was led by Gary in a longish run around Bristol docks. Group two was taken by me (Pru, hello!) to Queen's Square, and we had the op-perch-tuna-ty to do some running drills. The drills included high knee skipping, extended leg skipping, and bounding - although during my demo it was quickly renamed to 'prancing'. All these drills are designed to increase your po-tench-ial leg elasticity and strengthen mussels too (was that a fish pun or not? I'd be shellfish not to point that one out).

Group one had a great steady run around the docks and seemed almost turbot-charged when they came in to Queen's Square where we were fin-ishing our drills with a bit of a plank-ton. We all had a good stretch of well worked limbs, and I made a few announcments about forthcoming events - next week's run to Windmill Hill City Farm and asking for help volunteering at the Bristol to Bath Marathon!

Enough fish puns? If you think you cod do better, let me roe as I trout I can get any more in! Or practice your farm puns for next week. See ewe then!

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Josh Coppersmith Heaven
Josh Coppersmith Heaven went on a group run

Tue 15th Sep 2015 at 6:30pm

Golden Heal

25 bright and breezy runners came together to run 3 miles up hill and down dale to get to Golden Hill Allotments on Tuesday. We met as usual at Vivo Sports Club, and once we'd warmed up, we ran up Gloucester Road, one of the main arteries in to Bristol to get to our destination. As it's a busy road, it hopefully showed some of our fellow Bristolians the full glory of our red thunder - and we got a few cheers on the way!

At the allotments, our task was to hand out flyers for the bi-annual Community Fair that occurs there (unsurprisingly, twice a year!). The gang split up in to groups and targeted different streets, flyers flying out of hands in in to letter boxes (don't you hate those letterboxes that have the little draft excluding 'brushes', they make it really hard to get a flimsy A5 bit of paper through!).

Because it was a longer run, time was against us and so everyone worked really hard to get all the flyers distributed; it was a close thing and there were a few left over but it's fair to say that that area of Bristol was fairly saturated with information.

On the way back down to Vivo, a couple of chaps tried to lure us in to a pub with pizza. I have to admit that it was tempting, but running is better than pizza (most of the time) and we made it back to Vivo in time to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Ted as it was his birthday the next day.

So a long run, but a fun one too. It was great to see everyone, thanks for coming!

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Ben Mason
Ben Mason went on a group run

Tue 8th Sep 2015 at 6:30pm

Barking Broadcasting Company

To some of us, this was the third time Barking at the BBC. (written mostly by Steph with a few asides by Pru!)

22 barking mad GoodGym runners attended Tuesday evenings run, with a warm welcome to Ellen who traveled from Bath to be with us. (Ellen is going to be helping Steph run GoodGym in Bath!)

Goodgym Bristol had something to celebrate tonight with the impending marriage of Chris and Kim on Saturday, Pru presented them with a montage of pictures from past runs, Kim took a lap of honour around the warm up circle with the montage in hand , I'm sure we would all like to wish them all the best and future happiness together.

Love is in the air but maybe not for the 1.5k Bristol Beast of a hill up to the BEEB and that's before Steph put them through their paces at the bottom with some tricep dips and press ups and again at the top with some speed drills - don't you just love a Barking Bath GoodGym trainer ( some may disagree ). We regrouped again at the summit for a song of kind .

Keep on mulching Keep on mulching and one fine day you'll dig and plant away ok maybe that's enough !!

Jules from the BEEB had a variety of tasks on hand forGoodGym so we split into three groups and donned our GLOVES OF GLORY to dig, plant and mulch the wild garden at the BBC, and I have to say you did a sterling job in 30 minutes, before heading back down that 1.5k hill for some more frills and drills from Steph.

After a regroup at the bottom we made our way back to the Vivo sports club and gym for some much needed stretching led by Steph and a reminder to the group that there are still lonely older people waiting to be your coach and get paired up with to make a difference in Bristol. If you want to find out more you can speak to Kim.

Thank you and well done again to everyone, it was a beast of a hill and a tough task. Keep on coming, and good luck to everyone who's running the Bristol Half this weekend!

(P.S from Pru - Cracking run report Steph! Bristol peeps, we will let you know when we can return the favour and head to Bath to help Steph on her first GoodGym Bath run!) (P.P.S If you're wondering who the chap in black shirt and jeans is, in the above photos, it's my mate Randall who was just passing by and who stepping in to help for 10 minutes! I'll get him running yet!)

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Simon Loughran