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 💪

A Monday afternoon visit for Mrs S, and it was a warm one in central London. As we ran down the list, she got stuck on the type of pasta that's a bit thicker than spaghetti, and between us we threw out all known variations of pasta until we finally arrived at linguine...thankfully the Waitrose at John Lewis had exactly what she wanted on the pasta front, and pretty much everything else too bar a couple of items - I was offered a glass of water with the recently bought elderflower cordial in it by way of post walk refreshment, which hit the spot perfectly.

A cooler Monday afternoon walk from Mr R's front gate to Tesco and back with the now very familiar list and reusable bag in hand - I played a little memory game of picking items without referring to the list, and nearly got a full house, just the tin of prunes caught me out...

As we stood under the big tree this morning in perfect running conditions, we knew we were thin on the ground volunteer wise, so it needed a couple of shout outs to the parent community who were arriving from all directions to get all the high viz's filled and the marshal spots complete, but thankfully we got there in the end - one lucky (unsuspecting) mum and dad even got volunteered by their daughter to fill the tailwalker role and one of the marshalling spots...

Thankfully Hilary was on hand to fill her usual spot at gate 1, and we soon had this week's participants lined up and eager to get started and with our event ambassador Melanie on time keeping duty, it was soon 3-2-1 Go! and they were off.

An almost dead heat for 1st and 2nd required Run Director Nick to use his refereeing skills to adjudicate on who got token #1...and we soon had our regular stream of finishers, accompanied by a lot of cheering from the sidelines, coming down the finish funnel - and when our recently cajoled tailwalker crossed the line (still smiling), event #381 was complete, and 29 runners and 11 volunteers had enjoyed another successful morning at the sunny Fields.