12 runners ran 4k to clean and scrub woodwork at Mencap

Our first task for the new year took us to City Mencap to clean and scrub down paintwork for a possible future repainting task. After welcoming everyone we found out what quite a few got for Christmas....shiny new Garmins! We will see lots of new activity on Strava this year. Big shout out to Laurie, James G, David and Ken for running two parkruns each on NYD doing the famous 'double'. Ken also ran between the parkruns clocking up 26.5km in total. Cara who couldn't make todays task also did the 'double'. Great running everyone.

We set off from the University on a direct route through to the high street admiring the Christmas lights and arrived at Mencap. We were welcomed by Kevin a trustee of the charity, who briefed us in the task and gave us cleaning equipment. This was shared out and pairs set out around the offices wiping down and cleaning all woodwork that was in view. James C and Catherine gave the radiators a shine, maybe just to keep warm! David even tackled some of the kitchen, we thought he was making some tea but unfortunately not!

Rich, Joe and Jennifer found some musical instruments and gave an impromptu musical rendition, couldn't really tell if it was in tune but it sounded sort of OK! We had some time before Kevin came back so we utilised some office space and did some group push-ups, sit-ups and a plank. Time to head back to the Uni so Joel led the way back to the high street and once we got to the pedestrian area we decided to do a caterpillar run. Rachel suggested that we do two groups of six and we set off at a pace with the rear runner shouting go as soon as they hit the front much to the amusement and some startled pedestrians. There was some great competitive sprinting and a bit of tugging going on.....Rich!

After catching our breathes we jogged back on the last part of our run to the Uni where we did our warm down stretches. This was my very first run leader task and nobody crawled back broken so all is good I hope, thanks guys. It was a great start to Goodgym Chelmsford in 2018.

Gerry