Well done to the 468 finishers this morning! Special welcome to the 126 people visiting us for the first time, including 22 completing their first ever parkrun 👏

🦺 Big THANK YOU to the 22 volunteers who helped out with everything to ensure a safe and welcoming event. Scott was on the bike and marshalling at Old Bedians rugby club while Ben was Run Director near the finish area.

Good luck to all those taking part in the Great Manchester Run tomorrow! 💪

Welcome to Derek for you first GoodGym session!

With a warm and sunny bank holiday weekend, the parks were packed, which also meant that the bins were overflowing with litter from takeaways and picnics. To counter the problem, Derek, Scott, Victor, and Ben met up in St Peter's Square to make the ~2 km jog towards the green spaces in Ardwick to remove as much as the litter as possible.

We started on the Greek Street green space near the ring road overpass, with litter accumulating near the traffic lights and from the main road after being discarded by passing drivers, and collected a few wheel trims and lots of cans and bottles. We continued up Lamport Close to drop off some full refuse sacks (just 3 here), before carrying on towards Kincardine Road and Gartside Gardens.

It seemed to be a hotspot for laughing gas use, with balloons and empty cannisters (13 or 14 in total) found in the car park of the Salvation Army building to add to their growing box of empty cannisters near their refuse point. More were to be found on the outskirts of the park, likely dumped by nearby parked cars.

Within Gartside Gardens, clearly a party had taken place with a pile of half open black bin bags near the entrance, while a lot of litter was splayed around the park, a lot having been blown from already full bins or from people placing it near to a bin, expecting it to magically stay close by to be collected... In this case we collected another 8 laughing gas cannisters and 9 full refuse sacks, leaving the park in a much tidier state than it was before.

12 sacks, over 20 laughing gas cannisters, and all of it picnic, takeaway, or packaging related. We got a lot of thanks from some of children in the park and from some passing drivers as we were litter picking. Gentle jog too despite the heat.

Scott and Ben filled their backpacks to go rucking along the Bridgewater Canal to deliver lots of tins and food to Manchester South-Central foodbank, with the drop-off point being the Chester Road Tesco.

Some of the items donated include:

• Easter eggs 🐣
• Peanut butter 🥜
• Tinned meat and tuna
• Pasta sauce
• Spaghetti 🍝
• UHT milk 🥛
• Pesto

During the run along the canal, we passed Embassy Village, a few barges, plus Old Trafford and lots of runners.