In at the deep end

Well you might think so, but certainly not for 15 runners in Bath this evening and they took the 4k run to Cleveland Pools in their stride. Find out more about this amazing place and see how you can help with getting it reopened http://www.clevelandpools.org.uk/ and at their heritage open weekends.

The task tonight was Pollarding

Hmmm!! What might that be? I hear you say, well it's a method of pruning shrubs and trees to keeping them smaller than they would naturally grow along the riverbank. This prevents them from getting too big and slipping into the river itself.

Welcome to Danielle

Joining the Goodgym Bath crew tonight.

Congratulations to David from GG Bristol on his 100th Good deed this evening... Three cheers ...Hip...Hip..Hip..Hooray!!

Nice to have David joining us from Goodgym Bristol and Sarah our very own coach run queen along.

A beautiful summer evening so the obvious choice of route along the canal path to the Heritage pools. A treat for some of tonight's group who are visiting for the first time.

On arrival Sally our host gave a brief insight into the pools history before arming team Goodgym with the tools for the job. One group took on the pollarding task, whilst the others tackled the weeds in and around the children's pool.

Tim proved to be a master at pollarding showing an artistic style and Danielle got stuck into the pool weeds showing she wasn't out of her depth on this job.

Lucy found tiny frogs, she seems to attract them wherever we go.

35 minutes in total on the task

One very happy host and 15 satisfied runners = A Win Win situation.

Time flies when your having fun and that was certainly the case tonight with just enough time to catch that snap before heading back to the leisure centre.

Thanks to Mary for back marking and to Sally for tonight's pun which was a winner with the ladies.

‘Thunderstorm and hail warning for Brighton issued by Met office’ said The Argus, Brighton’s local newspaper. Surely not again! After another week of dry and balmy weather could it be possible that the only bit of rain that we’ve had in a whole week would coincide with our second Goodgym run?! The first spots were felt early on but the full deluge held off until near the end. Although the thunder and lightening felt a little ominous in the end we got the nice running rain, the welcoming kind that cools you down and refreshes.

It was a longer run tonight, 4km each way and uphill on the way there, so we cracked on with quite a pace to maximise the time at the task. The speedsters went ahead led by me and back marked by Dani, with Tess (who wrote a fantastic blog about last weeks task) read about it here leading the rest, back marked by Gillian from head office.

Our task tonight was banishing bind weed at The Bevy. I LOVE the Bevy! The pub was previously closed down because of anti social behaviour but the local community raised the funds to refurbish it and now it serves as a community pub and hub for the Moulsecoomb estate. There are all sorts of things going on there from quiz nights and live music nights, and ‘Brains at the Bevy’ where local academics come and give short and enlightening talks. The food is pretty good as well and even cheaper than chips in some other parts of town! And the locals are super friendly! Check out their website for more info and if you haven’t been there before, go check them out here. There is even a parkrun on its doorstep, of the hilly and off road variety, and the Bevy hosts coffee and breakfast after.

So there was a massive amount of bind weed that needed to be pulled up and that is exactly what we did. Whilst Jonathon & Tom did great work weeding the raised area above the pub garden (and thankfully not falling off the wall!) everybody else tackled the bind weed in the kitchen garden to the side. And after just 20 minutes we had removed 2 massive building sacks full of the stuff. Great work gang!

Bind weed banished we headed home, this time downhill. On the way back we injected a little bit of speed into the proceedings by running fast for a couple of timed intervals, stopping when I blew my whistle (that was fun, I felt like a school sports teacher!) and recovered by jogging back to join the group where we continued as one until the next burst of speed. If you want to run faster you have to, well …run faster! But by doing it in short bursts you get your body to adjust to the faster pace until before you know it that has become your new normal.

As we stretched at the end Gillian reminded us that Goodgym is about more than the group runs, so if you want to get involved with Missions and Coached runs then please join up and bring your documents along so we can get you DBS checked and doing even more good!

Well done to you all, that was a long run in hot conditions, please come along for next week’s shorter run with another great task and it might not even rain!