London's community half marathon went red this year! 🔥

A huge congratulations to the oodles of GoodGym folk who caught well-earned happy mornings under a hot-hot-hot late summer sun ☺️

It was the biggest joy seeing you all!

Please send me your photos (!) and I will pop them up here (alexmurtough@goodgym.org) ❤️

This morning when we arrived at the British Heart Foundation, our task was changed as they had had a delivery so we were assigned to unpack and place these items around the store in position where they would be best to catch the eye of the retailers. But first it was to dismantle a window displays items and put them in their rightful section of the store. Then we got to unpacking, there were different coloured throws, cushions with different animals on, foxes and dogs door stops and daschunds heat excluders or bees ones. The time went quickly as we were kept so busy.

Our steps this morning really added up, what with walking to, between and during our tasks, not counting both of our walks back to our humble abodes.

Emily and Gosia volunteered at Latchmere Rec Junior Parkrun today. The weather was gorgeous which attracted to the park quite an impressive crowd of juniors and their parents 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 .

We were welcomed by Sue, who was today's run director 🎬. She assigned us with a marshal spot, gave a briefing on the route and also instructed what should be done in case of any accident 🚨.

Gosia was on a spot two, close to the start line. She brought a bubble 🫧 machine with her that brought some additional excitement to the race and was a "special" point of interest at each of the three laps.

Emily was assigned a spot closer to the finish line and was bravely handing out the high fives 🙌 to the runners as they passed through her spot.

Our last participant passed the finish line around 9:30 and around ten minutes after we left the park and headed to the Kingston centre for our next mission.

I visited Camden area today to help out with the weeding 🌱 in Mr N's backyard. I arrived around 6 pm and was welcomed by him at the door 🚪. He was very kind and welcoming but he clearly struggled to move and also couldn't hear that well what I was saying. Well a kind smile always gives a clear message even if you can't hear it 🙂 and I relied on that.

He showed me the backyard which was clearly neglected, there were weeds but also a lot of styrofoam flying around, foxes 🦊 poo, waste bags and a general rubbish 🚮.

Mr N said that his neighbour 👨‍🌾 helped him with the weeds in the past but now he is away traveling. He also said that it's probably more than a year since the last tidy up and I could totally believe that 😆.

I started with the weeds that were taking a lot of garden space, but - luckily - most of them were quite easy to take out (nice and clean, together with the roots 👌).

Then - Mr N grabbed a shovel and started to gather a styrofoam from the ground so I helped out with that. The wind 🌬 was quite strong and a bit cheeky 🐒 as whenever we tried to gather the styrofoam in one place it kept sending it back from where it came from 😈. We did progress though and by the end there was much less of it and much safer to walk.

We have collected around five bags of weeds and a couple with the styrofoam. Mr N was thankful, said it's looking much clearer now and asked if we will come back to do the front garden. I didn't take the bags out as he said his daughter will call services to collect them.