There's a storm coming and it's not going to be safe

We were subject to a late change and I was subject to that phone call that no Trainer wants in the two hours before the Group Run! Due to a visit from Storm Brendan, high winds and pretty horrific rain late this afternoon, our planned visit to Newcastle Eagles was cancelled for our safety. We are always super grateful to our task owners for looking out for us like this and as Nick pointed out later, the Eagles Community Arena is indeed "The windiest place on Earth at the best of times" we knew it was right to reschedule our visit this time around. The other good bit is that we were in turn gifted this glorious Geordie pun that I'm pretty confident many of our southern fans won't really understand. (Top punning, Paul!)

With very little notice and no reserve task we hastily re-planned and decided we would do a back-to-back week of plogging, this time heading in the opposite direction and down to the fabulous Quayside. I kept our intro short and sweet (and indoors!) tonight but there was plenty of time to catch up on two brilliant Community Missions that took place over the weekend, as well as two brilliant Half Marathon PBs run in York by Abi and Nick, who almost missed the start of the race. I was really pleased to see new runner Nada back tonight too, especially in such vile conditions.

Top marks, Nada, you can stay!

My brilliant chain tag warm up idea didn't really work with a smaller group and I committed it to memory to do in a massive park with a bigger group in the summer instead. Charlotte and Rachael headed off walking ahead of us and we soon trotted off on the downhill to the glorious Quayside which was, as always, full of runners. In contrast to our plogging visit to Leazes Park last week, there was quite a bit of litter to collect due to the high winds and within 20 minutes just 15 of us had filled 5 big sacks full of rubbish. There's something very satisfying about clearing an area we are so proud of on such a miserable night.

I'm so glad I came, that was such a great spot for litter picking! - Charlotte

Everyone was starting to look a bit cold so I got straight on with the fitness session which really got everyone moving- the first round being 5 lower-body exercises repeated for 1 minute as many times as possible (you should see Tom's star jumps, they are MEGA) followed by varying-effort sprints and jogging for 5 flat out minutes. Everyone committed to the fitness session so well, including Andrew with some top lamp post marshalling and high fiving.

Kudos!

The January Challenge is rumbling on and we have loads of extra chances to do good things over the next few weeks. Check out our list of Community Missions and pop along to any you fancy!

Don't forget the BONUS RUN taking place this Saturday it's a great way to spend your lunchtime, and it's the perfect run to bring someone along to for the first time. See you there!

Anji x

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