25 runners completed a 3k run to do loads of good at Windmill Hill City Farm

A mercifully cooler night than last Tuesday's run as we all gathered at Vivo for tonight's task. With Pru away on a well earned holiday in sunny (?) Scotland - and, no doubt, dreaming up fab and devious new ways of improving our fitness - we were joined tonight by the wonderful Lydia, trainer for GoodGym Bournemouth, to lead the session and put us through our paces.

Also, a big welcome to Danielle and Lydia S, who were joining us for the first (of many we hope!)times and to Esther, who has returned to the GoodGym fold after a couple of years away - we all hope you really enjoyed the experience!

With time being of the essence, after Lydia's group intro, Dave led us straight off to the farm with Chris L kindly backmarking, where we were met by our host, the lovely Lizzie, to explained tonight's task.

Splitting us into two groups:

• Group one were tasked with the jobs of snapping sticks (which Deb thoroughly enjoyed in view of the lovely clunky sound they made!) and removing lots of pesky bindweed, which had rather taken over areas of the farm.
• Group two were on litter picking duty, covering the road and hedges surrounding the farm, splitting the rubbish into recyclable and non-recyclable items. Discovering beer and cider cans lodged inside the wire fencing, Kim discovered that dextrous fingers could move a can up an over the fence and quickly joined by others, the cans were painstakingly removed. Whilst one can was quite enough for most, Emily was determined not to let a last can go begging and deftly removed a second, with assistance and encouragement from the team!

WIth a little bit of time on our hands, Chris B led us on a slightly longer route back via Victoria Park, with an optional hill climb for those who wanted it (the majority did - you awesome people!) and then back to Queen Square for a well earned cool down - or so we thought!!

We still had time for a little more exercise, so Lydia introduced us to the "PLANK OFF"- to see who would be the last man (or woman) standing (or, er, planking). Just over three minutes in and many had bitten the dust and we were down to three girls and three boys - it was suddenly a battle of the sexes! Approaching six minutes (yes, SIX!!) we were down to two, Caroline T and Andrew, who had both made the thing look ridiculously easy (and we all know that it isn't!). Finally, Andrew gave way (literally) leaving Caroline to claim the title for the girls and leave the rest of us awestruck.

After cooling down with stretches, there were a few announcements:

• Kim confirmed that we have coaches waiting to be paired up with runners, so get in touch if you would like to be involved.
• Dave confirmed that the next GG Bristol parkrun on Saturday 13th August will be at Bath Skyline, as there is a GG Bath Saturday run on the same day. Car lifts will be available and Deb will keep on press ganging you!
• Matt has added a Coastal Trail race on Saturday 12th November with options from 10k to Ultra!
• Lydia announced that GoodGym Bournemouth will be launching on Wednesday 17th August and will be running every Wednesday evening, so we are already planning a tour! Based on tonight's evidence, it will be a roaring success, Lydia, and we all wish you well with this - thank you for joining us and leading us so brilliantly!
• Oh, and Alice won the award for the snazziest running tights!!

What a lovely run! It was hot for the first part as a seemingly endless horde of runners left Vivo Gym to run to the Childrens Scrapstore to sort...er... scrap! We found a great rhythm and were soon in the labyrinthine Scrapstore.

We were given several tasks to do - make toys safe by removing batteries, tags and other stuff, cutting up lengths of rope with a heated knife that smelt quite pungent, cutting up netting and fabric (which looked like a massive old tent!), taking thread from industrial sized cotton reels, and the GoodGym classic of taking water damaged phones out of boxes and sorting them in to their component parts - note that we've been to the Scrapstore around 8-10 times and every time we've had those phones to deal with. Well, they are NO MORE! The last 6 boxes were sorted. Phew!

As always at the Scrapstore, we found a variety of random and unexpected items - this time it was a cage full of shop floor dummy legs! These were used in our group photo at the end, and whilst there was a bit of a faff to get them back in to the warehouse, we warmed up by running up and down on the kerb just outside.

Running back was more pleasant - the heat had abated somewhat and we cooled off in Queens Square with a few exercises for our core, and a lovely lying down stretch sequence. As it had been my birthday the day before, the gang spared no expense and presented me with one of the Scrapstore phones, a tuft of rope and a bit of glitter. It almost brought a tear to my eye...

Massive mchugebig congratulations to Richard for making it to the grand number of 100 runs with GoodGym, and also belated happy birthday to my birthday twin Alex, who was also celebrating the day before!