14 people ran 7k to do a litter pick for the Canal and River Trust

We welcomed four newbies to GG Brum tonight. We had Deb and Paul from GG Bristol who had just got off a plane from Bucharest after doing the half marathon there and seen as they landed in Brum, came along! We also had Nicola who joined us for the first time and Kate who came along and talked to the group about plogging on the canals which involves encouraging people to pick up litter while out running on the canals, which was rather appropriate as that was exactly what we were doing tonight! It was also great to welcome Catherine back for the first time for a while.

watching out for terrorist geese

We headed to the canal armed with bin bags, litter pickers and gloves. Once down there we split into four groups each picking the litter on a different section of our adopted part of the canal. Laura, Lee and karin even found a beer in a tree, therefore a 'beer tree'! We managed to steer clear of the rather vicious Canadian geese who have recently had their babies, so aren’t to be messed with. However we did seem some more friendly ducks with their little ducklings further along the canal which helped Richard produce this weeks ‘pun’. In total our litter picking filled seven bin bags, top work!

time-trial

We then headed to Millennium point for the time-trial. With Deb and Paul’s ‘half marathon legs’ they ‘sat this one out’. But what they didn’t do Running wise they certainly made up for with cheering everyone on! It must have really helped as we had nine PB’s out of our eleven time-trialists! Some were doing it for the first time but it’s still a PB! It really was a great sight to see. Richard and John raced each other hard, both just outside six minutes. Richard pushed that hard he collapsed in a heap after crossing The finishing line. Hannah put in a great performance pulling Rob a long all the way round, only for him to outsprint her in the last 100 metres! Trip him up next time Hannah ;-) Kate had a great run on her first GG run. Laura smashed her pb by an incredible 17 second and Nicola put in a top run. Catherine pushed all the way in her first run back. As ever everyone was amazing with the effort they put in, it was fantastic to see, next month can we have Paul and Deb back to help me with the cheering, please, please!

Once done we headed uphill back to 1000 Trades and on arriving back I’m sure you would all agree it was a great evenings work!

Next week we will be out doing good again, it would be great if you could join us sign up here.

6 runners ran 6km and widened the footpath at the Lew Whitehead Community Centre.

What a change from last week! It was a beautifully warm and sunny evening for a run in Barnsley this evening. We welcomed along brand new runner Amanda, to the gang - don't forget to give her a big cheer!

After a warm up, it was pretty much uphill all the way towards Wosborough - well, it felt like it anyway. The best thing to distract us from all the uphill was the gorgeous view across the valley, and you don't get that without a little bit of climbing.

We arrived at the Lew Whitehead Centre and were greeted by the lovely chaps from Twiggs who were providing us with some tools and guidance for our task. The footpath around the field had become completely engulfed by grass, so much that you can barely see that a tarmac path exists! Another volunteer group had made a start in clearing the grass and getting the path back to its original width at the very top section, and now it was our turn.

It was hard graft scraping the turf away, rolling and lifting it up and chucking it all under the hedges. Amanda broke a nail but was very brave and carried on regardless. She was soon distracted by digging up some dog poo along with her turf and forgot about the nail. Meanwhile Lisa was getting some nice straight edges in and Sharon was just grabbing and yanking the turf up with her bare hands (well, gloved, but you know).

Speedy Suze from Sheffield had arrived after we'd left, but legged it to join us too - so she grabbed the last spade and jumped straight into the task.

Apparently what I've got is a shovel, not a spade.. which is why I'm finding this very difficult.. (Suze)

After half an hour of hard graft, we'd taken the footpath back to full width for about a 20m stretch. It was a hard effort but the dog walkers were already enjoying the newly widened path before we'd even left the field!

We celebrated our achievement with a mega set of the world's best exercises, lunges.

• Forward lunges
• Backward lunges
• Side lunges
• Lunges with kicks
• Balance lunges
• Sneaky jumping squats (not lunges)

With wobbly legs, we headed back over the hill, enjoying the last of the evening sunshine. Sharon and Suze boshed a couple of extra hill reps on the way back because they're hardcore like that and Mark chucked in a bonus set of bench press-ups too.

We'll definitely be heading back to help again with the footpath in the future, there's a lot of work to do there to keep an eye out on the future runs to see what's happening.