A sunny Thursday in Anfield saw 9 Goodgymmers meet at Dobsons court.

A huge well done to our very active bunch: Phillip, Sallyann, Pauline and Anne Marie who cycled, Ema who walked and Helena who ran! A really incredible effort!

After a quick introduction and welcome to Leanne for her first ever task with goodgym , the runners set off for a quick 3km loop around the beautiful Newsham park, taking in the wildlife along the way (read 'stopping to pet dogs' ) whilst the walkers did a 1km route in the local area. It was lovely to see Anne Marie back in action!

The task took place at Dobson Court, a sheltered housing scheme who recently put together The Grow it, Plant it, Eat it project with the support of their Scheme Manager Alison Rose and Older Persons Specialist Nicky Rowlands (Onward Homes) The project was awarded funding from The Dutchy of Lancashire and Liverpool Community Environment Fund. Enabling the resident’s group to make a transformation of the gardens, alongside activities such as planting from seed, making window boxes, chillies, and sunflower growing competitions plus much more. They recognised as a group they needed some support with some of the physical tasks of putting up our gardening arches, and thats where goodgym came in, getting right to it, digging holes, leveling the ground, erecting the arches as well as putting up some solar lights.

By the time we left the residents we thrilled with the garden improvements, and even invited us back for tea and cake! We cannot wait to see what the arches look like with plants on and will definitely be keeping in touch to find out and help with any future digging/heavy lifting!

13 runners ran 7km to dig the foundation of a path at Harthill Youth Centre's new community garden.

Finally, a sunny evening in Liverpool and our fabulous 13 set-off for a run to the Wavertree area of the city. 1km into our run and an uneven road surface unfortunately lead to a runner taking a tumble, [updates suggest that our friend is doing fine and will be back up and running very soon :)] so we took a time-out to deal with this and to ensure that our team mate was okay.

Shout out to John, Lyn and Jan for their support and care in dealing with this incident.

As such, we arrived at the task a little later than we'd planned but this amazing team of runners jumped straight into action. Over 20 minutes they worked solidly to clear weeds and grass to prepare the ground for a path that will lead around Harthill Youth Centre to a planned new community garden.

John and his team at the centre were really impressed with how fast our runners worked, treating us to bottles of water and slices of orange for sustenance. John has agreed to us coming back to finish the job in a few weeks.

The return run was gladly less eventful and I was inspired by how well everyone kept pace, especially up a long incline.

Extra shout outs go to newbies Anne-Marie, Emily and Karen who fitted right in with the team and to Philip, who has moved up the country after being part of GoodGym Birmingham and was a dynamo path-clearer!

Next week is bank holiday Monday, and as it is becoming our tradition, we'll have a longer run that day – around 9km. We'll be leafleting for cancer support charity Sunflowers and since the task isn't as time restricted, if you're an improver runner looking to challenge yourself, I really welcome you to come on this one. For those less keen on the distance, the following week's task is just 2km from our base - so perfect for beginners. Sign-up for both tasks here.

Good luck to everyone taking part in the Liverpool Spring 10km on Sunday. If you’re not running, why not come and give us a cheer? #RedThunder

Until next time, Char <3