Three GoodGymers turned up on a cool Saturday morning for some painting action!

The local councillor, Jess, had noticed that the black railings on the boundary of the park and pavement needed some TLC. Who knows how long ago it was when they were last painted, probably when installed?

Jess had got the black metal paint and brushes, paid for by the council, and so now it was just a matter of man and woman power.

We got to work, scraping the old flaky bits off the railings and then sploshing and splashing the black paint on.

We worked together on one area to make that good, but we'll definitely have to come back to finish the whole stretch off railings along Englishcombe Lane.

Four Goodgymers met to tend to young trees planted earlier this year. Some looked worse for wear given the amount of sunshine and lack of rain in recent months so hopefully we had arrived just in time.

We cleared the grass from around the base of the trees, making way for wood chippings to help protect the tree from climbing weeds and grass that would steal it's nutrients.

A good job done, and fingers crossed the trees agree and bounce back really quickly.

The railings along the edge of Moorlands Park adjacent to Englishcombe Lane stretch for a couple of hundred metres or so. Today we meet up to help paint a small section of that.

The task involves brushing off the older flakier paint, then Hammerite-ing (other outdoor metal paints are available) the rails in nice new black paint.

Young Izzy supplied us with coffee, tea and minty Penguins while we got on with the job.

By the end of the session, we’d managed to finish maybe another 9 or so sections of railing, plus most of Jer’s clothes and exposed skin. More painting may follow in the coming months…?

17 GoodGym volunteers ran to Victoria Park to tidy the play area and the skatepark. We did some litter picking and raked the sand in the play areas. Lots of people and young families use this space and we were proud to help keep it safe and clean for all to use.

All hail Clean Mary!

We met at the leisure centre and crossed our fingers that the rain wouldn't come back! Firstly, we awarded Mary a custom t-shirt to celebrate her 200 runs milestone that she recently smashed. Now she has two 'Clean Mary' t-shirts to wear when she goes out running! Well done Mary! Keep up the running!!

I then shared running news from the past weekend. Several of took part in a fantastic Running Omnium that was part of the Top of the Gorge festival in Cheddar. It was great fun and we got really cool medals! Hopefully see some of you there next year.

We also got involved in a great Community Mission at the weekend where we ran to help out at the annual Sunday Funday organised by the team at St James and St Phillips' church.

The Great Get Together

I talked about The Great Get Together which is a project that GoodGym groups across the country are partnering with this week. The project was set up to remember Jo Cox who was killed three years ago. The aim of the initiative is to celebrate the things that bring us together and what we have in common and to reject divisive politics that tear our communities apart.

We all reflected that although we are from different walks of life the one thing we all have in common is a love of running and helping our community. We wore some stickers and wristbands to show our support for coming together and being part of an inclusive community.

After our warm-up we took the scenic route to the play park. We ran through Bath city centre, around The Circus and past the Royal Crescent. What beautiful city we get to run in!

The Rake Get Together

We made it to the park and surveyed the task ahead. After passing out the pickers some of the runners got on their way picking litter from all around the park. There hasn't been too much rubbish dropped lately because of the poor weather ... but there was still too much for us to bear and so we took action!

In for a penny in for a pound

Some of the more interesting things we found were a £1 coin, half of a lego person and a bike chain. We also found a plastic 'skate' on wheels in the bushes. Unsure exactly how this got there (or even what it is for!?) but we dug it out and safely removed it anyway!

Come and give us a sand with this work!

Lots of sand escapes from the play areas out onto the path which can make it slippery and dangerous to walk across. We shovelled a load of it from the path back into the sand pit and then raked it in.

At the end of the task we admired our hard work from the vantage point of one of the climbing frames. We climbed up and had a picture looking out across the sands.

Upcoming runs

• This Sunday there is a fun and FREE 10km race for all in GG South-West to celebrate GG Swindon's 1st birthday. More info here.
• Next week we are running to help out at Cleveland Pools
• Next Thursday we are taking part in our monthly pub quiz. Even if you just started to coming to GoodGym it is a great way to get to know other runners and have some fun!

A RIGHT ROYAL RUN

16 super runners ran 3km to Royal Victoria Park and were honoured to be joined by GoodGym royalty, Steph, our very own Lady Bath. We made the most of the early evening light to run the scenic route past the Theatre Royal, in and around Queens Square and stopped for sets of fantastically unsynchronised squats on the Royal Crescent lawn!

RUN FOR YOUR WORLD

Tonight’s task was a litter pick in the park focused around Earth Hour, a global campaign overseen by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to raise awareness of environmental issues. Earth Hour is this Saturday 30th March at 8:30pm-9:30pm (local time), join millions around the world to turn off the lights and speak up about why nature matters. https://www.earthhour.org/

YOU GOTTA REDUCE, RE-USE, RECYCLE

Our runners divided into task teams, we had the ‘rakers’ to target the sandpits and woodchipped areas around the play equipment, and some may have sampled some of the delights of the play equipment themselves!

Plus we had the ‘litter pickers’ who deftly cleaned around the perimeter fence, ducked under picnic benches and retreated into the undergrowth to retrieve rubbish.

Rob achieved legend status with the skaters who he managed to persuade to help him load up a big bag of litter from the Skate Park!

Once the light and temperature dropped we headed back to base for some stretching and reminders:

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

This Thursday is our social activity, the Pub Quiz at St. James Wine Vaults (BA1 2TW) 8:00pm (for a 9:00pm quiz). Everyone welcome, hope to see you there. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/pub-quiz-social

Next week’s Group Run task is clothes sorting and the clocks will have sprung forward so we’ll have the light on our side to run along the canal out to our hosts at the Nest Project: https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/organising-donated-baby-clothes-d801eea0-cbe3-4e1f-99b6-0335d387cab5

WELL DONE AND THANK YOU

Welcome and well done to Melanie on her first GoodGym Group Run, the first of many we hope. Thank you to Allie and Chris for back marking and to Nicola for the Run Report pun.
Well done all for a good run and job well done!

It was legs eleven for our 5K Park Run tonight. We welcomed Ali in to the fold, she's quit the gym and joined GG which is a great move. We often include strength and conditioning exercises into our runs but for more fitness in the fresh air also recommended the Wild Gym outdoor exercise sessions run by our fellow GG runner and leader Lucy. https://www.wildgym.co.uk/

PARK LIFE

After a warm up and a headcount we set off through town running at the pace of chat and it was lovely to overhear Dora and Tom conversing in Spanish as we ran. We took in the iconic sights of beautiful Bath and an owl or (twit) twoo and arrived at our destination for our litter pick task in the playground at Royal Victoria Park.

WHAT A RUBBISH TASK!

There were bags a plenty to fill, Rosie and Emily hit a goldmine of pickings by the picnic benches. Emma assures us that it is merely coincidence that she recently visited the Jura distillery and we found an empty bottle of their whiskey on the park wall!

HOT SPOTS

Ruth enlightened us about the red wheels that have been attached to the park perimeter fence by artist Alison Harper to make visible the pollution in the air we breathe. http://transitionlarkhall.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Alison-Hot.pdf We're big advocates on cleaning up the local environment and encouraging everyone to use their legs as their transport so we snapped a pic of the Hot Spots artwork.

We moved on to the skate park and Rob took responsibility for the coins found and in his true fundraising fashion will donate them on. It was a lovely wind along the river finished off with a sprint finish ready for a cool down and we had a buzz of pun generation tonight over stretches as we hive mind-ed the pun. Big thank you to Mary for back-marking.

Good luck to Emma for the Two Tunnels 10k on Sunday and to all others who are racing this weekend.

Watch this space for announcements from Sam Ollason - the first being, lets reinstate the monthly pub quiz social, the next one falls on Thursday 30th August at The Boater, stick in your diaries folks.