A cracking evening at one of our favourite spots — Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground, which always delivers on the rewarding session front.

We had a nice little group run: Nick, Rue, John, Adam and Brad joined me in setting off from the Aquatics Centre, jogging up the canal in glorious evening light — about as lovely a warm-up as we'll get. We were joined by Chloe, Joke and Paul at the playground, and got a warm welcome from task owner Ange.

For the record: a Newham task, held in Hackney, with Chloe, John and Rue over from Tower Hamlets. Three boroughs, one sandpile...

The task itself? A mound of sand to shift. Not just any sand — this had been donated from the London Stadium long jump pit, freshly dug out after Saturday's Diamond League meet. Our job was to move what we could over to the sandpit part of the playground.

Cue a shifting and spreading production line: shovels flying, wheelbarrows trundling back and forth, and plenty of teamwork as barrow after barrow were ferried across, with only a small number of mechanical and loading issues.

A couple of surprising things - first, that the stadium needs brand new sand every single time — and second, just how much of it there is. But actually when you think about it, world-class long jumpers probably do cover a fair bit of ground, so the pit must need to be pretty deep to land in safely. A quick google afterwards confirmed it: a competition long jump pit needs somewhere in the region of 6–9 cubic metres of sand. Worth retaining that for when it comes up in a pub quiz.

By the end of our session, we'd made a visible dent and felt like we'd had a workout. Huge thanks to Ange for having us. And a brilliant turnout — it genuinely made the difference, because these tasks simply don't happen without people showing up. So thank you to everyone who came along and we'd love to see you all again soon 💪

An almost perfect evening for a pleasant 3k social run and return visit to the communal gardens at Wild Green E13, where this week we were tasked with weeding the "mural bed" (aka disturbing yet again a lot of snails), and after being given a crash course in weed identification ("take out all the ones with the big rabbity ear style leaves"), and armed with an impressive collection of trowels, and a wheelbarrow to use as the collector of said ears and anything else that could be composted, Hilary, Graham, Brad and Nick got to work.

We had an audience, as the evening sunshine had brought out the crowds to enjoy the park and gardens, and we received quite a few compliments from the benches on the great work we were doing to keep the garden neat and tidy - our hosts were equally delighted with our efforts, and once we'd got the weeding done, it was time to water the vegetable patch in advance of the forecast hot spell later this week - Graham discovered the Edvard Munch "Scream" watering can was surprisingly accurate...After an equally pleasant run back, we decided Hilary's birthday of last week needed celebrating, and conveniently our run had finished right outside the pub...always great when a plan comes together.

We'll be back again to help out at the gardens on 4th August - more watering, weeding, composting and whatever other tasks that Fleur and her friendly colleagues need doing to keep this particular community garden in excellent condition.