Stu Coe

Part 2 of 3 on our campaign to spread the word for those affected by the trampling feet of the marathon runners running past their homes and businesses on the morning of Halloween.

Tonight we took the short trip into the city to tackle the two city centre distribution routes in one fell swoop.

The walkers took the direct route to Town Hall Square while the runners looped around via the University Campus aiming to hit the meet point at the same time. Within a minute (ish) wasn't a bad effort at all!

We split into two teams, with Huw, Lindsay and Tracey heading down Gallowtree Gate, along High Street before looping round and covering Churchgate and Belgrave Gate/Haymarket on their northern section. Meanwhile, Christine, Dave, Jen, Mel, Michaela and Stu took on the southern section heading out towards the train station and up London Road.

A very different task to last week, with the rows of terraced houses we were firing a leaflet into a letterbox every few seconds. This was much more spaced out with a plethora of shops and businesses rather than tightly packed housing. Lindsay and Tracey, learning from G & T last week, brought along wooden spoons to help force the leaflets through - more useful on the residential routes but great stuff nonetheless!

Well done everyone, back to Belgrave Road next week to complete this trilogy of tasks before we return for a gardening task at St Matthews the following week!

Happy running, HD

Week 1 of our campaign to spread the word of road closures for residents living and working on the Leicester Half Marathon route on behalf of LOROS. It last rained last Tuesday night, at GoodGym o'clock. A completely dry week later and what do you know, 15 minutes before GoodGym o'clock back came the rain!

Luckily, it relented by the time we'd run to Belgrave Circle to begin our task, wet leaflets are infinitely trickier to force through letterboxes!

After Huw, remembering Jimmy's top leafleting tip from two years hence, thought he would share this knowledge with the group, Tracey and Gwyn outed themselves as serious leafletters unveiling their wooden spoons, used to push the leaflet through - absolute genius!

We split into teams tackling a street each, Dave and Mel, Huw & Steve, Tracey and Gwyn and the trio of Lindsay, Stu and Sunday's Manchester Marathon hero Jen. We fired the information through letterboxes in double quick time, running out of leaflets completely about 15 minutes short of our task time with several streets to go! Too quick for our own good!

Plenty more to do along Belgrave Road and through the city centre before race day - cracking work gang!

HD

Plan A - use one of the last week's of evening daylight to finish off the sleeper staining project.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.

Plan B - litter picking on the National Cycle Network!

A shorter run than planned this evening to Slater St to attack the litter on the National Cycle Network. Four GoodGymmers, eight bin bags filled in barely 200m, we normally manage to get all the way to Abbey Park on this task but the sheer density of litter meant we could pretty much fill half a bag without moving much further than a few metres!

Thanks to Dave for the suggested run pun of "raining cans and dog-sh1t", played a bit safer for the official title, we'll use that one as the unofficial one!

Well done gang, more litter removed for the runners, walkers and cyclists in the city!

HD

A second visit in recent times to our friends at St Matthew's Big Local for part two of our task tidying up the hedges at the MUGA.

Runners Elena, Steve, Stu and Huw set off from DMU to meet up with Dave, Lindsay and Mel plus handyman John from St Matthew's Big Local. On arrival we found the work had already begun so we dived in armed with loppers and snippers and started trimming back the hedges protruding over the grassed area around the multi-use games area.

Once again it was great to see the site in full use with lots of young people getting active all around the site.

After a full on 45 minutes or so our work was complete leaving John with well into double figures of filled 100 litre bin bags to dispose of tomorrow. With the street side of the fence completed a few weeks back, we've now tidied up the interior of the site and it looks fantastic.

Top work gang!

HD

After our last outing in 2019 supporting LOROS with the Rothley 10k event resulted in an almighty drenching it was no surprise to see a day of rain forecast for this year's running. Luckily for us, the bulk of the bad weather came during the day with it easing off later in the afternoon and stopping just in time for the race, resulting in near on perfect running conditions for the 600 or so taking part.

Once we were kitted out in our hi-viz gear and issued with our goody bags we headed off to our stations, most of us out on the course marshaling while Dave got involved in inflating the finish inflatable thingy! What is the actual word for one of those things?!

Plenty of clapping and cheering later, we returned for the real treat in the goody bag, the fish and chips voucher as a thank you for volunteering - some of the best fish and chips around too! I've had an email from LOROS saying they raised over £20,000 on the night, fantastic news for a wonderful charity!

Well done everyone!

HD