Well done to the 468 finishers this morning! Special welcome to the 126 people visiting us for the first time, including 22 completing their first ever parkrun 👏

🦺 Big THANK YOU to the 22 volunteers who helped out with everything to ensure a safe and welcoming event. Scott was on the bike and marshalling at Old Bedians rugby club while Ben was Run Director near the finish area.

Good luck to all those taking part in the Great Manchester Run tomorrow! 💪

Welcome to Derek for you first GoodGym session!

With a warm and sunny bank holiday weekend, the parks were packed, which also meant that the bins were overflowing with litter from takeaways and picnics. To counter the problem, Derek, Scott, Victor, and Ben met up in St Peter's Square to make the ~2 km jog towards the green spaces in Ardwick to remove as much as the litter as possible.

We started on the Greek Street green space near the ring road overpass, with litter accumulating near the traffic lights and from the main road after being discarded by passing drivers, and collected a few wheel trims and lots of cans and bottles. We continued up Lamport Close to drop off some full refuse sacks (just 3 here), before carrying on towards Kincardine Road and Gartside Gardens.

It seemed to be a hotspot for laughing gas use, with balloons and empty cannisters (13 or 14 in total) found in the car park of the Salvation Army building to add to their growing box of empty cannisters near their refuse point. More were to be found on the outskirts of the park, likely dumped by nearby parked cars.

Within Gartside Gardens, clearly a party had taken place with a pile of half open black bin bags near the entrance, while a lot of litter was splayed around the park, a lot having been blown from already full bins or from people placing it near to a bin, expecting it to magically stay close by to be collected... In this case we collected another 8 laughing gas cannisters and 9 full refuse sacks, leaving the park in a much tidier state than it was before.

12 sacks, over 20 laughing gas cannisters, and all of it picnic, takeaway, or packaging related. We got a lot of thanks from some of children in the park and from some passing drivers as we were litter picking. Gentle jog too despite the heat.

Makeshift session with Ben involved with organising Pint of Science this week. Just the single runner carrying nearly 6 kg of tins, cans, UHT milk, and some noodles, rice, and packets of pasta sauce. Heavy bag in the increasingly warm weather!

Afterwards, a short run from the Tesco in Stretford to Gorse Hill allotments where Peter was making a start to weed some of the beds, plant out lots of runner beans, and heavily water the polytunnel and beds with the warm temperatures expected over the bank holiday weekend. The corn, carrots, and lots of beans seemed to be enjoying the growing season, with a few potatoes showing promise too, which we covered to some extent.

Likely sessions coming up to help with watering and maintenance on the plot. The garden at the Studios had certainly seen a few changes too, with a new fence and pond!

First GoodGym Manchester mission perhaps...(?) Ran out to Wythenshawe after a long day in work to mow the lawn and aggressively weed the garden for Ms K.

With a good lawn mower, patio knife, rake, and a sturdy pair of gloves, the grass was swiftly clipped to size, sticky weed was removed, and the endless brambles were ripped out by their roots to leave the garden much more accessible and welcoming in time for the summer months.

Managed to fill in a hole under the fence where foxes had likely been digging, and cleared up at the end to fill up the garden waste bin.

The pet dog provided plenty of background music and entertainment! Successful session, and looking forward to more Manchester Missions! 💪

A solo paper round for Ben, similar to Hazel earlier in the week for GoodGym Stockport, for a free local community newspaper, the Manchester Post 🗞

300 newspapers delivered to neighbouring streets in Longsight in just over 2 hours, including the folding. A brief rain shower was no issue, with an array of canvas bags to store the newspapers, safely guarded by Juno, to carry out in two trips. Lots of curious people with filming going on at a local shop too!

Will repeat in June for now, but will re-evaluate in the summer if worth continuing. Lots of folding and heavy lifting to do it alone.

Welcome to Victor for your first GoodGym session! 👏

After clearing the space 2 weeks ago, we now needed to remove the old rotting raised beds to install new ones, allowing the school to use the space as an educational growing area.

Some wooden beds were very rotten and came apart easily, with Ben and Victor carrying the pieces to the waste disposal area a short walk away. Others were less rotten, making the pieces heavy and took a while to saw in half!

Fanette and Hazel saved the strawberries for future use, while the mattock, hammer, and saw got a good workout to pull apart the old beds.

As we were dismantling, Peter from the school started piecing together the pre-cut pieces to produce 1.2 m x 2.4 m beds. With fingers crossed the drill batteries would hold and a spirit level, the beds were made, stabilisers were used to stop bowing, and waterproof sheeting used to try and reduce the speed of the beds rotting down.

With as many shovels as we could fine and lots of elbow grease, we managed to build and fill 2 new raises beds, in the 2 h session, with all the deadwood taken for disposal - the wheelbarrow flat tyre didn't hold up for this and meant we only got a small layer of fresh top soil too.

Top effort to get it done this evening! 💪 Certainly earned some food and the water/biscuits after a heavy workout.