In our largest turn out of the year so far 30 runners helped on a triple challenge at the Children's Scrapstore in St Werburghs.

The Children's Scrapstore is an Aladdin's cave of things that can be used by children for creative play. The items are donated by local businesses and then the wonderful team at the Scrapstore sort and make them safe for children to play with. They had plenty for us to do this evening so it was great that we had so many runners. Including 5 new faces, welcome Lucy, Kirsty, Simon, Nik and Ellie!

After splitting into two groups for the run to St Werburghs, the meandering pacey group and the easy strollers . We timed it to perfection and met at the lights just up the road so we all arrived at the task together. Kelly from the Scrapstore welcomed us in and explained our three challenges.

• 1 - Distribute leaflets around the local area
• 2 - Move furniture from a hallway into the back office
• 3 - Process loads of items ready to be used
  

Alice led the 7 leafleteers into the streets to spread the word about the fun the could be had at a Scrapstore birthday party. While Woodwose Matt directed the 10 furniture shifters and everyone else took a work station in the warehouse and sorted that scrap.

The furniture team had an added challenge in the fact that the staff are very fussy about how things are arranged on their shelves and would not be happy if everything did not go back in it's right place. Being the sharp focused they are they took photos and, once relocated, put everything back on the shelves in the right place (hopefully...). In the warehouse Fi and newbie Kirsty took on the totally tubular task of cutting pipe into lengths. As you can see from the photos they got a bit carried away and started pretending to be robots at some points, well who wouldn't!? Others cut thread from bobbins, sorted phones, took apart chairs and cut nets. It was busier than carnival at Clapham Junction during rush hour.

As the time ran out the tasks were all pretty much complete and we had achieved far more than anyone had expected. We took a group photo (minus some of the leafleteers who were stuck outside because the door was locked, sorry!), split into two groups again and headed back to Queen Square. On our return the first group completed some drills of lunges, skips and grapevines before we all assembled at the end for a stretch. After a news update and Dave's genius pun suggestion we said goodbye to some while others came for out monthly eats, which was a lovely curry at Tikka Flame organised by the wonderful Paul.

Thanks to those who came along tonight, I hope you had a great time. We really showed how much a group of eager runners can do in such a short space of time. Good luck to all you Larmer Tree runners this weekend.

Scrappy Running,

Gary