Ten runners ran around their local area hunting for treasure

An age old tradition, the easter treasure hunt. Our intrepid runners were given a series of "clues" to solve on their runs with the mandate of running only from their homes in search of treasure.

Clues

1. A badger sleeping or a squirrel gnawing, find me an ANIMAL that isn't boring.
2. As wide as an ocean or as high as a mile, find me a BRIDGE that will make me smile.
3. A place to rejoice, reflect or pray, find me a RELIGIOUS BUILDING to make my day.
4. I'd love a DeLorean or a fighter jet, find me a VEHICLE I'll never forget.
5. A pitch, a field, a table, a court, show me an interesting place to play SPORT.
6. It'll definitely need letters more than four, find me a PUB with a great scrabble score.

Evidence

The evidence was to be delivered in the form of a picture collage. Kudos to Mel for getting her head round the technology and narrowing down the enormous number of pictures to two entries for her and Dave. Props also to Lisette and Elena for including pictures of themselves completing the task!

Scoring

Judging for the first five clues was to be entirely arbitrary with Huw awarding between 1 and 5 points for each picture with the more unusual, weird and wonderful scoring higher and the bland, boring and common scoring lower. There were a couple of twists, with things not adjudged to have been spotted DURING a run scoring lower although Jen got around this potential pothole by completing her entire task in the garden during her Leicester Runners Garden Mile challenge. Full marks for creativity!

The sixth clue, pub scrabble, was done purely on the numbers with five points going to the top score, four to the next two, three to the next two and so on. And it was the pub scrabble that clinched victory for the winner...

Results

Firstly, thank you to everyone for such a great effort putting them together, hopefully you had fun doing it and the scores were just done on gut instinct! Everybody managed at least a four point score with a picture but some shout outs for the five point pictures. Dave's Kirby & West milk float, Caroline & Matt's bridge, Michaela's beautifully manicured bowling green and Elena's temple.

So...coming in as back marker (fittingly!) is Jimmy with 13 points! Then we have Nicola and Jen with 15, Michaela and Matt/Caroline with 16 and Lisette with 17.

In joint second with 18 points are Mel and Dave and indeed if Mel hadn't given Dave the higher scrabble score he'd have (undoubtedly undeservedly!) won the whole thing.

But the winner with 19 points is Elena with the deceptively high scoring pub The Cradock Arms sneaking her over the line, well done!

Prize-giving

The prize is an easter egg, Elena feel free to either buy yourself an egg (and I'll reimburse you somehow) and send us a picture of you enjoying it or otherwise I'll get one and hopefully it's still in one piece by the time we meet as a group again!

AOB

Well done gang! Next challenge is on the website here where you have the chance to throw some shapes out. Feel free to get stuck into challenges/sessions being run by other areas, Birmingham sign up here have a street sign challenge going on until Monday which looks fun in particular but there is loads going on around the country that you can take part in whether you want fitness drills, training challenges or a bit of fun for your run.

Keep in touch, HD

13 bored runners took part in The GoodGym Leicester Quiz

A bit of an attempt at using technology from trainer Huw (who can't usually even be trusted to take pictures on a group run) saw the GG Leicester community come together online to attempt a quiz!

Using the powers of Facebook Live and Kahoot we took part in a 20 question multiple choice quiz, with questions about GoodGym, running and social distancing filling the bulk of the teasers.

Thanks for having a go everyone, well done to Ashley & Nick for being the first GG Leicester Quiz Champions (always pays to have two GG runners in your household folks) and hopefully we'll find something else to keep us amused next Tuesday!

Run safe folks, once a day, I'll be checking your Stravas! ;-)

Stay safe, HD

11 runners ran 6km to help LOROS raise awareness of their fundraising events

Part 3 of our work to help LOROS spread the word about their 2020 fundraising events took us to Leicester's Golden Mile along Belgrave and Melton Road. We shared our news of weekend parkruns, Burghley 7, Kibworth 6, Peatling Challenge and marathon training miles and welcomed Emma along to her first GoodGym good deed. Give her a cheer!

We took the scenic route along the river in the fading light (not many more weeks of that!) and met Mel and Dave on Abbey Park St armed with the remaining 800 booklets from our batch of over 2,500. Mel, Dave, Michaela, Jen, Matt and Caroline took the left hand side of the road with Emma, Nat, Jimmy, Sharon and Huw heading down the right. We powered along covering businesses from Abbey Park St up to the corner of Gipsy Road, a distance of 1.35km - so close to our own Golden Mile. Everyone went home extra hungry after experiencing the wonderful smells coming from the array of food outlets along the famous stretch. The shops, much like our previous tasks in other parts of the city, were largely welcoming and happy to display the booklets for LOROS which is fantastic to see.

Our fitness task, as we'd ended up a fair way further away from DMU than the start of our task, was to hunt down Dave and Mel who'd headed back early to the car to shoot off to their committee meeting. Mission accomplished we then set off on our run commute back heading through the city on the better lit roads.

A super effort tonight folks, well done to Emma on good deed number 1 and Matt and Caroline on reaching 5 good deeds. Thanks to Mel and Sharon for the pics and Mel and Dave for taking the booklets to the task. Cheers all round!

Next week we're back to visit Scope for more fun and frolics in the basement.

Happy running, HD

Nine runners ran 4.5km to help clear the basement at the Scope charity shop

A beautiful morning suggested spring was in the air. By lunchtime it was raining and by the time we were all heading to DMU it was cold and sleety. Easy come, easy go! After hearing about each other's running adventures including weekend races alongside GG runners from Birmingham and Derby we set off for Scope.

For the second consecutive visit we had a slightly different task to our usual clothes sorting. Having done such a sterling job of tidying up one basement room last time we were shifted into the other half tonight to tackle the shelves. Filled to bursting with assorted donations, junk and paperwork we quickly set about storing paperwork and sorting the rest into some semblance of order. Discovering all sorts of weird and wonderful items, many long past their best, we created a neat and tidy assortment where once stood chaos. We even found a set of Liverpool FC curtains that were in such a dilapidated state they may well have not seen the light of day since the last time the Red Men won the top division!

Having finished bang on time we headed back to DMU for some sprint repeats on the straight alongside the building, a perfect space for the activity giving us a clear run to go hard and recover.

A super effort tonight and Liam and Amanda were clearly grateful as ever for our contribution! Well done team GG!

Look out on the weekly email this week for some forthcoming community mission opportunities helping Leicester Outdoor Pursuits Centre, Menphys and LOROS. See you all next week as we get out on the cycle network once again to help Sustrans!

Happy running, HD

9 runners ran 4km to help LOROS inform businesses and residents of the forthcoming Leicester Marathon

Another week, another celebration as the wonderful Mel became Leicester's third GoodGym angel by completing her 100th good deed. It was also the 50th time Mel has volunteered to take photos of our good deeds and anyone who has ever run with us will know just how much she brings to the group. Well done Mel! We heard stories of parkruns, multiple laps at Equinox (hundreds of kilometres run by our runners past and present over the weekend) and some participation in GoodGym's Super Saturday.

We made our way steadily to the start/split point for our task in the city centre. Splitting into two squads, Dave, Mel, Sheila, Sharon and Michaela headed up to take on the London Road area while Caroline, Matt, Huw and Jimmy pounded the streets of the city centre taking in Charles St, Haymarket and Humberstone Gate on their travels. We visited pubs, takeaways, shops and more salacious venues all without consuming a calorie or spending a penny despite temptations galore. The healthiest shopping trip ever!

So many shopkeepers seemed really grateful for the information we were giving them to help their businesses understand the impact of the runners passing by on October 6th and I'm sure LOROS will be delighted with the support we've given them over the last few weeks to get the message out. Well done everybody.

We regrouped at the top of Wellington St with Mel and Dave walking back and the rest of the group heading for a longer loop back including a blast up New Walk (giving Jimmy and Caroline some practice for their last mile in the Leicester Half) and back around to land back at base at 7.29pm thanks to Michaela directing us through the short cut past her office!

Most of us then retreated to the pub to raise a glass to Mel who kindly got the beers in and provided more doughnuts and cookies than we could devour - some happy families and work colleagues will reap the benefits of the leftovers tomorrow! We also discussed a group visit to We Run LE1 on Friday October 4th.

Brilliant work tonight everyone, see you all next week!

HD

Seven runners ran 6km to help LOROS notify residents on the Leicester Marathon route of road closures

It's leafleting season at the minute, our first for LOROS tonight as we set to work to notify as many residents as possible on the marathon route of the associated road closures on October 6th.

We had a lovely surprise as we met at DMU as Nicola P dropped in to say hello to the gang and show off her bump! Lovely to see you Nicola! We heard about Caroline's near miss at a parkrun PB, Dave and Mel's adventure to Colby parkrun and how everyone got on in the John Fraser 10 over the weekend. Great running going on from everyone at the minute!

With the bags for delivery route 3 and 4 packed we set off along the river for a Belgrave Road rendezvous. Quickly into our stride we scooted up and down the streets of terraced houses (thankful that they weren't palisades - thanks Jim!) in quick time. Soon we'd delivered the entire bag of route 3 leaflets with many many streets left on our handily marked up maps. Dave came to the rescue, scooting back to collect the route 4 leaflets which thankfully contained the same information and we continued zooming up and down the streets adjoining Belgrave Road. As 7pm arrived we came to a natural end with a bag and a half of the leaflets safely delivered. There's plenty more work to do on this task, we'll hit the city centre on our group run in a fortnight but if anyone fancies an extra good deed via a community mission please shout up and we'll get it sorted!

We took a longer loop back through the delightful Abbey Park, checked out part of the National Cycle Network (full of litter as usual) to reccy a potential task site for next week and nipped into Leicester Cycle Speedway track where Matt introduced us to the guys there and we exchanged details to offer them our volunteering services for future weeks. Super work all round!

Well done to all tonight, cracking stuff!

HD