Last night we teamed up with local running club The Ealing Eagles to help marshal at their inaugural Blondin Park Relays event!

For something a bit different we headed out to marshal for the evening making sure all the runners went in the right direction throughout the event and members of the public were kept safe amongst the stampede! Everyone had to run 8x800 in teams of two (4 laps of the park each) which sounded brutal and exhilarating in equal measures!

Not wanting to miss out on the running fun, we started at our usual location in Ealing Broadway and ran as a group through the lovely Walpole and Lammas before arriving at the park for our duties. Everyone was kitted out with lovely yellow official marshal bibs (a bit boil in the bag on such a mild evening!) and shown to their positions.

• Lionel, Sam and Kate took on some extra responsibility helping with the official finish times
• Harvey made sure no one trampled the lovely wild flowers on the tight bend
• Samar and Samina led people onto the path and made sure no-one got trampled
• Alex made sure no one ran into the bin!
• Callum and Michael held runners off running down two potential wrong paths
• Basia led everyone back around the third bend
• Jenni kept everyone heading towards the finish
• Elena directed everyone into the relay area and finish line
• Adam helped near the finish area, even doing a bit of babysitting so a couple could run as a team!
• Hayley took part coming in as third mixed team!
• Sophie and Tom took part and were in strong competition against each other the whole way
• Chris and Lauriane took part as team Les Aigles, repping GoodGym the whole way in their lovely red tees, they even helped pick up the signage after the event finished

We all stayed to watch the finish ceremony before heading back on our run to the start. Everyone was really delighted to have been able to support the event and thought it was lovely to be able to see lots of local runners giving it their all on a Tuesday evening. Hopefully it will be a yearly event and we'll be able to help again in the future!

Finally, a massive congrats to Jenni who completed her 150th good deed last night! Amazing stuff, we'll definitely be celebrating that one on the next social!

13 runners, 6km of street pounding and hundreds of bitey red ants! All in an evenings work for GoodGym Ealing helping Trees For Cities.

In the mix last night we had Samina, brand new to GoodGym (and running full stop!) she smashed out 4 miles and got stuck in the the task at hand. What a great achievement! Much like the ants I hope she's been bitten by the running bug! We also had tourist, Jenny, from GoodGym Barnet join us for the evening, great to have you Jenny!

After some introductions and some warm up exercises (not much needed on such a muggy evening!) we weaved our way down to the canal where we met with tools and shown back to the spot we had started to clear a few weeks ago. There was still so much to do and many more trees to unearth so we all got stuck straight in.

Once bitten...

It wasn't long before we realised the stinging in our legs wasn't the familiar nettle sting we were all used to but we had in fact been joined by hundreds of bitey red ants! The key was to keep moving and not stand too still, all just adding to the exercise for the evening. Undeterred the group ploughed on and continued to unveil lots of hidden saplings now being given the space to continue to grow.

Although a little stingy at times, everyone really loves this task. It's great to see the difference we've made straight away and we all left knowing that we'd helped with a really important job that would otherwise struggle to get done.