12 Runners ran just under 4km to help a local nursery school spread wood chippings

The evening was bright and warm when the group set off for the night's group run from GoodGym Croydon HQ - Solutions Fitness. We had our mandatory warm up session in front of Rennaissance House after which Ellie proceeded with a group of front runners while I led the rest of the evening runners. Running through East Croydon station was challenging giving the sea of people at the time and the group took extra care to avoid running into people. We received lots of stares from perplexed commuters as we snaked our way through the human traffic around the station.

We arrived at Tunstall Nursery School where we met Jane, the deputy headteacher and a jumbo bag filled with wood chippings and another tonne bag of coarse sharp sand. The first task for the night was to spread the chippings on a large raised bed about 10m away and Jane provided us with wheelbarrows, trolleys, baskets and shovels. The group got down to work with some runners filling the wheelbarrows and containers with wood chippings while another team worked as transporters moving the loaded wood chippings through a paved gokarting like path to the raised bed. At the raised bed three runners worked to lift the wheelbarrows and containers onto the raised bed and spread the wood chipping evenly. The runners regularly swapped roles until the task was completed.

Due to the enormous amount of wood chippings we were unable to embark on the second task of filling the sandpit with sand as all the time was spent on filling the raised bed with wood chippings. However a team of runners led by Sally helped move some used tyres from the front of the school to the playground at the rear of the school.

Task completed and with some runners looking forward to the social we departed the school. Our fitness session was a time trial with the runners running the loop between Addiscombe Court Road and Tunstall Road. After which we proceeded to HQ for mandatory stretches and onward to Boxpark where we had a splendid time.

Next Tuesday evening’s run we will be returning to Park Hill Recreation Ground https://www.croydon.gov.uk/leisure/parksandopenspaces/parksatoz/park-hill-recreation-ground tonight to help the Friends of Park Hill http://parkhillpark.org.uk. This is a beautiful park in the centre of Croydon and has a community garden inside the walled garden. Josi has a selection of tasks for us all which will all contribute to preparing the park for the Festival of Peace in the summer.

7 runners ran 7km to clear leaves and pull up weeks from the Thornton Heath Rec flowerbeds

Despite being still a bit chilly, it was great running weather for one of our longer runs - seven brave runners headed out to our regular warm-up spot where we received many interested glances as we high knee-d, side stepped and stretched our way round in circles! We headed out as one group with the faster runners looping around brilliantly, before all arriving together ready for the task.

Unfortunately we were unable to complete the planned task of digging a trench, as after a quick check it turned out that the ground was still completely frozen after the snowy weather at the weekend. So Atul from Friends of Thornton Heath Rec found some new gardening tasks for us, which he explained when we arrived at the park. We made a start by filling a huge bag with fallen leaves from the flowerbeds and picking up some litter from around the garden. Then we moved round the corner to the flowerbeds that we planted with bulbs last year – excitingly the Tulips we planted are growing really well! We cleared more leaves from this area and then weeded around the plants, so that the flowerbeds are ready for sunflowers to be planted soon.

Powered back by some delicious chocolate eggs kindly given to us by Atul, we upped the pace on our run back with some ‘Fartlek’ interval training. Everyone took turns to choose when we started the next sprint and there were some very impressive accelerations from all the runners. The calls of ‘Fartlek’ definitely received some interesting looks from passers-by! We then finished up with some stretching and cool-down when we got back.

A big GoodGym Croydon welcome to new runner Claire who got stuck right in to the task and the run - hope to see you back soon!

As I mentioned, next Tuesday we will be heading to Good Deeds in a Lovely Garden at White Horse Park - It's also the last Tuesday of the month, so time for the BoxPark social – see you there!