Miriam

Six GoodGymers filled volunteering slots at Luton Wardown Parkrun, taking on Event set-up, First-timers’ welcome, marshalling and barcode scanning. As ever a great event to be part of - every runner and walker cheered on their way (with the wisdom of experience at least one of the team donned gloves to avoid an unfortunate clapping injury). Back next month!

After a day of torrential rain the clouds parted and sun shone on our group run, making lovely running conditions!

We greeted Duncan, our newest member and headed up the hill to Stockwood park, and then on to the gravel Welcome to Luton sign, which was riddled with thistles before we gave it a cleanup. With ten runners and some toots of support from passing traffic, we got the job thoroughly done in no time at all!

We stopped by Stockwood Park on the way back and borrowed the rugby pitch to do some out-and-back sprint intervals, to really get those muscles working!

A super seven runners came together to tackle this evening's task, but first we had to get there which was literally an uphill struggle!🏃🏽🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏻‍♂️🏃🏻‍♀️

70m of altitude were gained in the short run to our task, most of which in one dreaded 11% incline hill. Certainly a challenge for the legs!🥵

Arriving at our turf-stripping task for the St. Anne's Community Gardeners we discovered that dry, hard ground is very hard to work with, but once we broke into the surface we managed to start teasing the turf away.⛏️ It was definitely a full body workout as the turf vigorously resisted our attacks and had to be wrestled away.

Eventually, what initially seemed like an impossible task started to look manageable and our gang of gung-ho GoodGymmers committed to completing the two plots we'd been assigned and with arms and legs and backs all tiring, a final push got the job done, mission accomplished!

We then jogged round to a nearby park for a good deep stretch of our legs and backs to keep the aches away in the morning, and then made our fully downhill way home, much appreciated for weary bodies! We'll all sleep well after that! 😴

This week we arrived en masse at Maidenhall Primary school to have another go at gardening their driveway flower beds.

With eight of us we got a load of weeding done, removed ivy, and left the prettier plants some space to grow in.

With the task complete we ran back through Bury park to the town hall where we took in the About Us projected light show performance before heading on home.