Tonight's group run was to St John's church in Upper Norwood. It's being held up by some wood struts hence the pun (thanks Mat). We were heading there to help out with a couple of tasks involving slabs, shovelling and snipping.

First off we met at the Bridge House and shared our fave chocolate bars, inspired by Mat's revels.

Then we did a quick warm up in the park, a dreadful headcount and hit the road, swerving through a bit of the park before heading up the hill to the church.

We met Sara (and her very excitable pooch) who gave us 3 jobs.

✂️ Clare, Ian and Mat got straight on with trimming back some brambles, snipping up the stalks and bagging them up.

🏋️‍♂️ Katy and Alex were on the heavy lifting, shifting slabs and making a lovely path!

🌱 And Hannah, Stephen and Sam had a length of weeds to clear for a new path.

So many brambles were cut back, that even some ivy and a mysterious other plant got bagged up, the slabs were moved in a jiffy and the weeds as far as a big tyre were removed and collected.

Down to the tyre...

We had a quick game of squat, squat, goose to work our quads, and then headed back.

Fab stuff.

Next week we run to TNG Youth Centre - Click here to sign up!

Today's Starter Session saw us meet at the Bridge House for a short run to Alexandra Recreation Ground for a tree planting task in the sun! ☀️

It was lovely to see some totally new-to-GoodGym faces in the forms of Eloise, Alison and Mat, as well as fairly new faces Carla and Kate and slightly less new to GG Linda (and me)!

After sharing our names and fave pub quiz rounds (as you do), we hit the road with a short jog down the hill and off towards Alex Rec.

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We were greeted by scenes of kids planting trees but were quickly ushered to another section of the park and equipped with shovels, saplings, seaweed, woodchip and netting to protect the wee trees.

Happy Turf-day!

We had 60 minutes to plant 60 trees:

🟢 Clearing a circle of turf

🕳 Digging a hole in the middle

🍱 Planting the sapling with some seaweed

🍟 Surrounding it with woodchip

💦 Watering it

🥅 Surrounding it with netting

Everyone smashed it, with time left over for a bit of weeding around the base of the other trees.

We finished up with a quick snap 📸 (Mat had clearly got the pun memo as he shouted "everybody say TREES") and then we jogged back to base.

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Great stuff gang 👍👍

So great to meet you all - ace running and tree planting :) Hopefully see you again soon!