A cold and windy night couldn't deter people from coming. Had they known I was taking the group then they probably would have stayed away. People have told me I am very detering or alluring. I can't remember which. My aftershave says I am a boss.

Escaping storm Gareth, our trainer, Sarah was in Majorca, on a package holiday, drinking cocktails and watching reruns of Only Fools and Horses in bars.

Minh joined us for his first run with GoodGym. Give him a cheer. He had been cajoled in a pub to come along. And a drunken promise is a promise. On a separate note, if anyone wants to buy a pet snake from me, then email separately. (That was a very boozy night.)

This was the first group run since the Big Half and the afterglow (and some of the hangovers from Sunday) had not passed. It seems we've adopted the Big Half as our home run with so many involved. It was special day with so many people running or volunteering.

A special mention to:

Jenny P who completed her first half marathon. Jen was overheard later in the evening talking about next time. Mwah ha ha!!! There will be a next time.

Vic who missed her pb by a second. Grr. How frustrating! Here's some uncalled for advice, Vic: Make your wee, on the start line, quicker in future. ;-)

Pieter, Kat, and Mridula who were manning the water station at 8 miles, and gave everyone such a mental lift, and a bottle of water.

And Sara who was harnessed in a lorry. No further explanation offered.

Please give them all a cheer.

Tonight's task was going back to the Royal Hill Community Garden for the last time. :-( So, it definitely was with some mixed feelings. Daryl gave the group the background to the story. In short, the land has been reclaimed by the council, so the space has to be clear by the end of the month. We were there to move stuff (as we do it so well) and salvage as many plants/shrubs/trees as we could, so they might be redistributed elsewhere.

We split up into small teams, and armed with spades, forks and troughs went to work. There were little duels going on all over the garden. Ollie won his personal battle with a bush that was reluctant to leave. Hayley was particularly proud of conquering the beast (see photo). Life is but small victories. The beast had proven to be a real stick in the mud, and thorn in Hayley's side. However, enlisting Dan and Sara's help turned the tide. (I am sure Hayley will embellish the story in years to come as she regales the story of when she uprooted an oak tree with her bare hands!)

When we finished, the overall effect was the garden was looking a lot barer. It was sad to see. However, we took comfort in that we are likely to see many of these plants again, just in different settings. The beast never dies!!!

Given we were on Royal Hill, as the street name suggests it is quite a hilly area, so the group badgered me to do some hill sprints. We ran to Hyde Vale and did some fixed point repetitions up it. Hill work is speed work in disguise and great for improving your form.

Well done everyone. Thanks for coming out in the elements. Sarah will be back next week and with a tan! Don't give her a cheer!!!

12 awesome runners ran 4k to help out at Royal Hill Community Garden!

We've had a bit of a dry spell of new runners recently but last night that ended when we were joined by the lovely Ellie! Welcome to the gang!

It was a bit of a chilly one, so we got going fairly quickly. We explained what each of us had for breakfast that morning to celebrate Croissant Day and only one person skipped breakfast and turns out he had skipped every meal since Sunday so that makes it ok! Lee I hope you had a nice post-fast dinner last night!

After a quick warm up we were on our way, taking the more scenic route to make up a bit of distance. All counts towards our January Challenge total!

We arrived at Royal Hill Garden and were greeted by the lovely Tony who had a few tasks lined up for for us. Bliss settled down with a cuppa while we distributed leaflets, one to promote the new Visual Geometry exhibition at the gallery and the other was a leaflet advertising for volunteers to help out at the garden. We split into two groups, my group took to the nearby streets off Royal Hill while Pieter's group headed for the Ashburnham triangle.

Meanwhile, Bliss and Alex drew the long straws and stayed inside to laminate posters! NICE!

After 20 mins, our leaflets had all gone and we headed back to the gallery to help put the posters up around the garden fence. Moments later, the other group arrived and we were all done!

Royal Hills!

We said our goodbyes to Tony and ran for the hills. Sadly they weren't lovely rolling hills in the countryside with little lambs bouncing around. These were more... shall we say, urban hills. We went to Point Hill and did 10 minutes of hill repeats, running uphill steady and controlled and then recovering nice and slow on the downhill. It's always so easy to stop when you are tired so a good way to make sure you push yourself a little bit more is to just say to yourself when you get tired you're going to count X number of seconds and push through the discomfort. Running is sometimes about learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable! But not always, it should primarily be fun and enjoyable of course! And if it isn't, then my best advice is to slow down until it is enjoyable!

After 10 or so minutes, it was time to jog back to the uni for a few stretches and then hometime!

Task force

Some of you will already be aware, but in case you aren't we have a GoodGym task force which you can get involved with if you have done 10 good deeds! As a member of task force you can help out with various things such as listing community missions of your own, coordinating social events, helping with social media or even writing the run report! If anyone wants to write the run report next week, or any week, please just shout, I'm sure everyone would love to hear from someone else for a change!

Great job on the task last night everyone! We got loads done and Tony was so pleased! See you next week!