With schools out and holidays abound our diminished crew took on the foodbank on another warm summer evening.

After meeting at Peartree for a quick jog, our crew of only 3 Goodgymmers got to work with the brooms and mop buckets. Some chat about holiday plans, running and the perils of raising daughters, we put in great effort to cover the whole warehouse between us and leave it with some shine.

A massive thanks to everyone for holding the fort, hoping everyone is enjoying some form of well earned break!

A beautiful but scorchio morning for a technical, multi-terrain 10.5km race. Great to see Bryanne, Hannah and Emily enjoying the Suffolk countryside and Damo taking another step towards the London Marathon for St Helena - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/damien-saiz3

Just a thought but wouldn't it be great to see wheelchair events and discounts for Foodbank users (as a minimum) at running events?

Can't help but think of the people who are not at events like this, Goodgym want to include everyone but have not achieved this yet either...

The actual event is supporting https://www.sesaw.co.uk/ another great cause.

Enjoy Sunday and HYDRATE! Especially if you cycled to and from the race!8

Lower Castle Park Bridge, the outdoor gym and Bull Meadow are a fair bit cleaner tonight after a good haul by four Goodgym heroes! The secrets we found include a cycle path sign in the ling grass and a cat collar in a ditch...someone out there destroyed a signpost and threw away whilst a cat is now free of a bell and blue collar treatment.

The litter which is all too familiar and not secretive at all is the McDonalds packaging, mars, snickers wrappers, broken beer bottles, cigarettes and plastic bags.

A short chat to a local resident got me thinking about connection...she was a little blunt, without a hello or thank you and fairly opinionated about young people leaving litter behind. But did she take the easy option? Moaning to friendly litter pickers is easy but I wonder if she has ever sat down and chatted to the teenagers at the park? Connect rather than shame and blame?

Anyway...after the litter pick the team attacked Castle Park's hills twice for a sharp fitness burst!

The topsy-turvy weather held off for us other than a light sprinkle as we headed for home!

It was brilliant to see Helen and Andy return to action with a smile and run a new route to Colchester Foodbank.

We passed a few pedestrians, motorists and truck drivers who probably had not seen a group of runners in matching t-shirts in that part of Colchester before! Along the way we stopped on a patch of grass to stretch and headed to Tollgate retail park to the huge foodbank.

The equipment was ready and we got to work sanitizing, sweeping and mopping making the foodbank shine and smell clean. It was a big physical effort to get the whole place done in time and not leave feeling we could have done more. Great job!

Our run back began with dynamic warm up of bum-flicks, side-steps and high-knees and we took a slightly greener route back to base.

Our talented PT Bryanne led a short stretch before we headed off home.

See you next month foodbank and remember to come along to Colchester Pride on Saturday and a fundraising event in the evening for Building Malawi.

Enjoy the bank holiday weekend!