An excellent "cross border" turnout this evening at the Hackney Adventure playground as we were joined by Lucinda, Kareem and Chris from Tower Hamlets, and welcomed Joke (from Newham) to her first mission.

There was rain in the air when we arrived at the gates with the usual air of nervous expectancy as to what Ange actually had planned for us this evening - "shifting stuff" proved to be the best description, as she showed us an area round the back of the centre where wooden panels, old crash mats, sinks(!), plastic boxes, bits of shed, guttering and a lot else beside was slowly being enveloped by the undergrowth. In preparation for an upcoming inspection she needed it moved to another area - and with that we got to work.

After a good 45 minutes of non stop back and forth, we had the whole place cleared, and all that remained to be moved were some water catching roof panels, and a couple of strangely shaped "mystery items"...Ange explained that these had been parts from a film set recreating the cave paintings in Lascaux France, and which had been donated to the playground to amuse the children (who apparently were pretty non plussed...). We also perhaps didn't treat them with the reverence they deserved as we soon had them tossed on top of the pile of everything else, and with that we bid our farewells to Ange for another week and ran off into the damp evening.

Run director Rue seemingly had almost everything perfectly under control at about 0850 this morning (tokens aside...ahem), and as we discussed between us all where to deploy our helpful volunteer team, including GoodGymmers Hilary, Nick and Kitty (on her GG debut!), around the course, a mass of little people seemed to arrive from all directions and we momentarily when into slight chaos mode as it suddenly felt like we were in the school dining hall and fielding questions from all directions!

However, like all the great masterpieces, once he'd picked up the baton to conduct today's proceedings everything seemingly fell back into place, and any fracture lines were quickly covered over as if it was all intended. One of our newest volunteers, Evie, led today's warmup, which certainly got both participants and onlookers hearts racing...and then it was 3-2-1 go.

38 enthusiastic runners took on the the slightly muddy 2 laps today, including 6 first timers, and our first runner home was crossing the line in a very impressive 8:17, with another 7 posting PBs - excellent work by all concerned, and thank you as always to all of today's volunteers.

See you next week under the big tree for more fun at the Fields.