On an unusually warm, but wet and windy October morning, 17 runners helped the Mina Road Park Group out of a bit of a bind with bind weed at Ashley Street Park. In honour of leading my first run, star jumps were a key feature of the warm up. It soon became clear that star jumps are not everyone's favourite! Since it was a weekend, we took a leisurely pace through Riverside Park and took a tour of the roundabout under the M32 to add a few extra meters to the 6K run. Once we found Ashley Street Park, we quickly set to work freeing the apple trees and shrubbery from the bind weed that had cleverly used artichoke plants as a trellis.

Needless to say we didn't choke!

What looked like a relatively small job at first, soon turned into a huge clear out as the pile of discarded bind weed threatened to overtake the children's play area (which some GoodGymers used to indulge their inner child). After about 50 minutes, the area had been completely transformed and I was kicking myself for not taking a "before" photo. The impressive and efficient work showed just how much of a difference a few determined runners can make in less than an hour. By the time we had returned to Mud Dock, the sun was shining and many of us stayed to reward our efforts with late breakfast and cake.

Welcome to our newest runner Jason and a special thank you goes out to Dave for backmarking and to James for bringing the gloves!

Painting and a shortish run. The GG equivalent of a perfect storm. No surprise then to see 23 eager faces lined up for our pre-run warm-up.

Originally listed as a double bill, a last minute cancellation of our scheduled visit to Ashley Street park meant that team Cube was to be expanded from the planned six to our entire group. Massive thanks then to our host Pete for rustling up plenty more rollers and paint brushes in the last couple of days.

The Cube is a small independent cinema and music venue run entirely by volunteers. Over the summer the venue closes down for essential maintenance but with many of the volunteers on holiday our help was very much appreciated to help with some of the painting.

We were to paint the outside walls with a special fire retardant paint and the gents toilet floor with a non slip version.

Toilet Team

Special thanks go to the volunteers for the toilet team particularly on such a hot day and especially in the presence of an 'unidentified liquid' (presumably water as the toilets had been thoroughly bleached and disinfected before our arrival).

Wall Team

Everyone else got to work on the outside walls. Amazingly we got 17 people in action in a fairly small space and as a result we managed to finish the whole space in just over 25 minutes. I have to say it looked pretty smart by the end (as evidenced by the much happier 'after' group shot)

With the task finished in such a short time there was plenty of time for some tricep dips in the Bearpit and a quick round of Grandmothers triple extension footsteps and Squatopia on the way back.

Well done everyone - and thanks to Sarah for helping to set this one up!

Bit chilly outside this morning, but things soon heated up when the feisty parkrun peeps tried to stage a mini-mutiny during the warm-up! Thankfully the (fairly good-natured :-)) rebellion was quickly put down and and so we headed off for our tasks with smiles on faces and the sun on our backs - didn't need the running jacket after all!.

At St Werburghs we split into two groups (thanks everyone for being flexible on task choice!) and Mel and Dave led one team off to the community centre gardening day while I continued on with the others to meet Mina Road Park Group.

Bramble-geddon

If Goodgym are a Justice-League style band of super-heroes then brambles must be their arch-enemies and the evil Dr Bramble had certainly been busy here, with the lovely green space outside Better Food choked by his minions' thorny claws.

The Park Group had already done much to clear away the surface growth before we arrived so our job was to tackle the roots. After some instruction from our host Hugh, Liam skillfully wielded the mattock (much like Thor with his hammer) while everyone else armed themselves with spades and by the end of the session we had prepared most of the patch for some new planting in the Spring.

Hammer At-tack

Meanwhile, having already shifted a couple of lengths of timber, some of the gardening group were now hard at work preparing the frame for a new compost heap, attaching a liner to the back and sides with a hammer and some tacks.

With Clo helping to move an army of wheelie bins back into the shed space freed up by the timber, it only remained for David and Dec to prepare a hole for one of the wooden posts that was to form a play installation at the centre. This involved smashing down through the concrete with a heavy pole before digging down the 15cm required for the post.

All in all, we smashed two tasks and certainly earned our lunch today.

Just heard from Hugh and he wanted me to pass on his thanks today:

Thanks very much for all your hard work this morning. Your runners really put their backs into it ,and we were amazed how much got done. In addition ,they were a really nice lot ,and it was a pleasure to have you all there