On a windy Wednesday evening, Ben, Emma and I ran 1.5 miles to the home of lovely Mrs B. She wanted us to help with some weeding in her back garden and, through her contacts who got in contact with GoodGym, the 3 of us were the answer to her gardening needs.

On the way to the mission, to make our run slightly longer, and because quite frankly we are big kids at heart (some of us more than others), we ran to a park close to Mrs B’s home and tried out the swings and array of other playground equipment. After taking numerous photos and dragging Ben away we made it to meet Mrs B. She was warm and welcoming and seemed very pleased to see us.

She showed us through to the back garden. The garden was over several levels and had lovely flower beds and listening to her talk about it you could tell it was her pride and joy and how frustrating it must be for her to not be able to look after it herself anymore. She had stunning ornate bird baths and a unique carved owl. She handed us tools and gloves and we got stuck in. We required some guidance from Mrs B over what was a weed and what was a flowering plant, with the most frequent question asked between us for a good half hour was ‘is this a weed?’ The gloves we were given were particularly fetching and Ben modelled his animal print pair beautifully (see picture). As a result of our speedy weeding we even had time to weed the drive, trim back some hedging, remove some moss from a garden wall and sweep up our cuttings before putting all of the garden waste into Mrs B’s green bin.

After Mrs B had a look at what we had done and a chat about her grandchildren and her love of dancing as a youngster, it was time to head home. On passing a wall, Emma and I challenged Ben to hold a wall squat, just like he gets us to do on our group runs. He happily accepted the challenge and actually looked like he enjoyed it (again, look above at the photo evidence!).

A great mission, for a lovely lady, with a great mission team – awesome job!

Click here to find out how you can get involved in GoodGym. We’re a lovely group of runners who get fit by doing good and have fun whilst we’re at it!