Tonight 9 keen runners headed to Hanover & Elm Grove ward where we doubled up on the doing good and made a huge difference to 2 different areas.

Before we set off we welcomed back David for his first group run for a while and Helena kindly told the group about my PB at the London 10k on Monday where I came back proud in the knowledge that I’m now 1 second faster than I was before!

We also reminded you about the Goodgym Olympics on June 30th which really are for all, with lots of fun events to take part in and we would love to have more of you come along. It’s a guaranteed good fun day out, there’s even a bake off and of course we’ll be eating the results right after judging! Entries close on June 3rd so please don’t delay and enter now! I mean right now! Click this link. I mean immediately!!!

And there is still room on the Goodgym shindig on the weekend of 20th & 21st July. I went to this last year and it was a great weekend with running, run chatting and lots of talking about ways to make Goodgym even better. It’s a great opportunity to visit a beautiful part of the country and hang out with other Goodgymers. If you are interested in going please click here.

Back to tonight’s task. The main task was to continue our clean up of the overgrown and jungly area in front of the almshouses at the bottom of Elm Grove. This is our 3rd visit here and on the previous 2 occasions we picked up an astonishing amount of litter, including copious drinks cans and bottles. We also cut back a load of vegetation to make the area more exposed and try to limit the anti social behaviour. I’m happy to say that our efforts seem to be working as tonight all we found was a half bottle of gin and a beer bottle. Definitely progress!

With no litter to pick this meant we could focus our efforts on removing the massive amount of bindweed that had grown over everything. We were literally pulling it out by the armful, great exercise for those upper back and arm muscles! It proved to be very satisfying work and we filled more than 10 bin bags full of bindweed and hopefully there are now some plants that can breathe a little easier because of our efforts.

Whilst most of us were pulling up the bindweed Frances and Martin went with Cllr David to do a fantastic job of painting over some scribbling on a nearby wall. We will be returning here in a few weeks to give it a second coat.

After the doing good there was just time to get in a bit of speed work on the Level. We ran a triangular route of about 400m working in 3 different gears, easy, medium and fast on each of the 3 sides. After a few laps of this we headed back to base for a cool down just in time to escape the rain.

Next week we'll be helping with the opening of a brand new community kitchen. See you then!