Ivo, the head of a shadowy criminal organisation, snuck into the YHA Coalbrookdale workhouse early on Sunday morning to recruit 5 pickpockets for a lucrative mission. There was ne'er even a warm up. What a hard task master he was. Their marks were boatmen, transporting goods along the canal at the Blists Hill Victorian Town and what they were carrying was so valuable that it was worth the 15km run to steal it. The timing was essential as they needed to be back at the workhouse at 10:30am, to eat their gruel before starting work.

One of the 6 must've had loose lips in the pub on Saturday night. As the group came closer to Blists Hill, they found that the Victorian townsfolk had implemented defences on the - definitely not uphill - paths leading to Blists Hill, which included brambles and nettles that pierced their thin and worn workhouse clothes. The town's most effective defences were fences, which shielded the canal from Ivo's gang, and mud. The mud came in different forms, muddy mud, very muddy mud, "slipper-wheeeeee" mud and might-lose-a-shoe mud, in increasing levels of danger.

The pickpockets found the going hard and ended up missing the boatmen at the canal. Defeated, they retreated to the road and made their way back to the workhouse, covering only 12km in 2 hours but making in back in time to snaffle some crisps, apples and day old sandwiches from the YHA workhouse's fridges.

The blue skies may have left the scene but GoodGymmers far and wide had gathered at Telford parkrun from the Shindig and elsewhere, bringing their own sunshine to the gathered masses.

With first timers joining the parkrun family, people bagging their alphabet T plus seasoned parkrunners and volunteers, a huge group cheered in the final parkrunner and her entourage of tailwalkers and marshals gathered along the way.

The results are published for anyone interested in that sort of thing and we look forward to hearing of future parkrun adventures from you all!

Run Director/Woking GG’s James was feeling nervous at 8.58 this morning as only a handful of children had arrived to run the 2k circuit today.

By 9 am 176 children were surrounding the bandstand ready to hear his welcome speech and begin the pre-run warm up led by a group of their peers.

At 9.13 176 children were on their way with 4 other GG Woking volunteers cheering them on. Becky, Katie, Kirsty and Mel enthusiastically carried out their marshal roles maintaining the runners’ safety and ensuring every participant had fun - None other than a Woking GGer can smile, encourage, clap, cheer or high five with such aplomb!

We look forward to doing it all again next week… ❤️

On this beautiful warm morning Wayne, Kirsty, Lauren, & Rebecca carried out various roles at the junior park run.

Kirsty brought young Jack with her today for his first ever park run. Jack did amazingly well & hope he becomes a regular park runner 🏃🏼‍♂️

This mornings run we had runners from a local school who took over all things park run. In total we had 185 runners with the fastest time an amazing 07:30. There were also 52 PB's, well done to everyone.

This coming Wednesday we are are running to the food bank in town to give it a deep clean, hope to see some of you there, enjoy the rest of your weekend 😄.