Hi All,

Before we kick things off i want to say a warm welcome to Russell who joined us tonight for his first group run. Hope you enjoyed it and hope to see you again.

From the week commencing March 25th, GoodGym teamed up with WWF to do good for the community across the UK with a variety of environmentally themed tasks for the tenth year of Earth Hour. Earth Hour is the world’s biggest switch off event. Each year, millions of people around the world switch off their lights and organise events – at home, in their community or in their towns or cities – to show they care about the future of our planet.

Tonights task was for us do some plogging along the streets of Chelmsford. Plogging is a combination of jogging and picking up litter which ( i think you'll agree ) fits us perfectly as it combines fitness and helping our community.

After a warm up we set off and started scouring all the path ways and hedges we past and with gloves and bin bags in hand swiftly picked up all we could find.

I had organised 2 routes for tonight, 1 group was 5km in length at a slower pace with the emphasis on chatting . the other was about 7.5km and to be at a slightly faster pace for those wanting to push it a bit. The routes would have meeting points along the way if people decided that they wanted to change groups and with myself leading the longer route and Laurie taking charge of the shorter one.

Chelmsford on the whole is quiet a clean and tidy place but through the combination of 13 people covering around 13km we managed to fill a couple of bin bags full of pieces of rubbish collected as we ran along , at night, with headtorches on. So a big Thank you to you for making it a nicer place. All these little acts build up to make a big difference and on the whole a nicer place to live.

We regrouped on the High street where we put our bin bags into the dustbins and ran back to base together. Some where lucky (unlucky) to arrive at the traffic lights by the police station as they changed to green so carried on. where as the rest (luckily) missed them and have to have a rest while they changed.

A group stretch off and chat about up coming events of the week. Hope you have a good, happy and healthy weekend and hope to see you next week where Gerry will be taking back to the Broomfield allotments for the first time this year.

Thanks and Keep running happy

Rich