The recent, much-needed rain was great news for plants and wildlife; less good for last night’s task…

Tunde to the rescue

Nice for nature, disastrous for our deed: the trees no longer needed watering by us last night. Thank goodness for Plan B’s. Our task owner, Tunde, from Friends of Meath Gardens, willingly found us a perfect Plan B, swiftly planning a big litter-pick of the gardens. The team were very willing to run through a variety of time-honoured lower body moves while we waited for Tunde (“Glute work’s good for your running.”) before teams were dispatched to all four corners of the park to fill multiple bags to bulging with a huge amount of litter. From coffee cups to cigarette butts (“It’s all going well, thanks, apart from the cigarette butts which are really fiddly.”) no stone was left unturned (literally).

Trash Stash of the Night went to Ruth’s cash-find (20p but don’t knock it – acorns & oak trees, an’ all that) and Anna’s slightly creepy, buried toy horse-head.

Time-honoured Tower Hamlets speedwork

Tunde was over the moon with the sheer volume of rubbish Team TH collected, and in true GG style, we celebrated with a little more exercise. Chris resurrected a terrific, time-honoured, TH speed session, introduced to the team in the earlier TH days by legendary Alex Eggs and Tom Scraggs. The session consisted of partnering up, and forming two teams to tackle a large lap of the park, high-fiving one another in the middle. A tough-but-fun end to trash-collecting.

Pilates follows plogging

We then headed to ‘the big bit of grass’ to finish with our Pilates for Runners part of the evening. Well done to the team for mastering the TVA vacuum (Friend: “What did you do on Monday?” TH GoodGymer: “So, I went to Meath Gardens and found my Transverse Abdominis muscle.”). After an already-tough evening of fitness, the team dug deep and performed some beautifully-executed Inchworms, Leg-Pulls Back and Front, Roll Ups and The Saw (“This game is called ‘Who’s got the tightest hip flexors’ ”).

We then raced back to base, stretched, ate some biscuits and headed home. What a wicked night. That rubbish, that care and attention to picking every last can and cup… What a contribution to the community. Team, you are truly terrific.

Thank you’s – and welcome’s

A massive welcome to Nazma, who joined us for her first ever GG run. Thanks for getting so much done, and for being so flexible with the Task-Plan B, and working so hard on your fitness. Do come and join us again very soon.

And what a pleasure to be joined by Lucy (by no means new to GG, but new to me) – please come back to TH soon.

And the thank you’s… Brilliant work from Chris for coming up with the idea and for leading the evening’s running session. Beautiful back-marking, there and back, from Leanne as usual – never out of sight - and hurrah for Chris, Bryon and Dave for leading the speedy runners back to base.

This week’s brilliant pun was brought to you by Bryon, and hurrah to the whole team for plenty of laughs getting us there.

And a big pat on the back (you’ve saved the day a bit) to Becky J, Gabrielle and Leanne for ideas and planning for next week’s task, when we’ll be helping out the utterly brilliant Acknowledging Youths charity, playing a running game and drinking, so sign up here to avoid missing out.

And lastly, 2nd September sees us heading to The Coborn with our newly formed quiz team, Let’s Get Quizzical (credit goes to Si for our ace team name) for some more school night drinking (and brainstorming). Do come and join us.