More progress made on our never ending project painting the sleepers along the towpath for the Canal & River Trust.

Dave heroically stepped back in to his former role to lead the run due to Huw's MCL going kaput as the runners made their way up water once more past Abbey Park.

Once on site, Lindsay and Mel picked litter, Jen and Huw got stuck in clearing the overhanging vegetation from the sleepers allowing painters Stu and Rob to follow behind. Teamwork makes the dream work! Jen left our traditional graffiti this time with an Olympic theme.

Another 30 or so metres done, one big effort required to strip the vegetation and paint the remaining 50m in the coming weeks and this 300m section will be complete!

Great work team!

If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise...

After several weeks of tasks "up river" from DMU it was time to go south to Aylestone Meadows a couple of kilometres down the water.

Some recent publicity in the local media suggested that picnic-goers were not leaving the place as they'd found it. However, luckily, or unluckily for litter hunters such as ourselves, some clearing up had taken place so it wasn't the total mess it could have been. Team GoodGym have a nose for litter though and we still found plenty of discarded trash on a pleasant loop through the meadows and back along the river. We also noticed some of the greenery we'd cut back along the towpath a couple of years back was now significantly overhanging and causing a hazard for runners, walkers and cyclists - another task for another day noted!

Coming through one of the car parks we noticed quite a few people sitting in their cars. It occured to Jen that it might be a "meeting place" for people. We assume she meant people meeting their friends to pick litter...why else would people meet in a secluded car park?!

Great work as ever gang!

HD

A fantastic evening at Watermead Park as we supported Dave, Mel and the team deliver an absolutely brilliant Watermead Challenge.

Our involvement in the event began a couple of weeks ago where Dave gathered Team GG in the dance studio at The Peepul Centre to attach the timing chips and safety pins to the race numbers of the 600 runners. Tonight our main task was to distribute those numbers to the runners in time for the start of the race.

Organising an event of this scale in the current climate is no mean feat, especially when most of it had been planned around restrictions having been lifted in June as originally planned. However, Dave and his team had all the bases covered and swiftly moved to plan B, delivering a safe and efficient event for everyone involved.

Katy, Jimmy, Rob, Mel, Jen, Ashley and Huw manned the number distribution tent, this year masked up and with a one way system in place. Luckily the running clubs had their numbers distributed to a club representative so this meant that any potential queues didn't materialise and all runners received their numbers in good time to run. Stu and Nick used their transferable skills from the vaccination centre to help on the car park while Lindsay was a Medal Marshall at the Race Village. Stu and Jen added another string to their volunteering bows by holding the pacing boards designed to spread everyone out before the start into estimated pace groups which were kept apart to ensure there was no crowding pre-start. Every base covered!

Great work gang! Then it was time to run...