Crocodile Done Deed

11 fabulous runners braved the cold to run 6 km to clear litter along the Portway

A cold but sunny Saturday morning greeted us as we met at Roll For The Soul before setting out on our expedition to the Portway. It was brilliant to welcome four GoodGym first-timers in Maddy, Julia, Anthony and Emilie, who certainly picked a very muddy task for their first run with us - we hope you enjoyed the "Get Fit Doing Good" experience all of you! Anthony takes the prize for lugging the biggest and heaviest rucksack on a Bristol run (probably ever!).

After a brief introduction and warm up, we headed off on our run stopping briefly for tricep dips and on to the Portway, where we were joined by Fiona, making good progress in her recovery from injury and today's task was sure to put that to the test!

Our task was to clear a portion of the Avon Gorge river bank of litter for Surfers Against Sewage. We have been here on a number of occasions, but this was perhaps our muckiest and boggiest task there yet and after the challenge of jumping down off the Portway on to the river bank, Paul very kindly demonstrated just how slippy and muddy the area was by ending up on his backside after a particularly zealous pursuit of a stray beer can!

There were sections where it was just to slippy to cross, meaning that we were resorting to good old-fashioned bunk ups back onto the pathway and then climbing down again further along. We spent a good hour clearing litter with the usual array of unusual detritus, including a rather fetching crocodile croc shoe, which gave Chris the immediate inspiration for today's pun - nice one Chris, your brief fallow pun period is officially over!

It was wonderful to hear many of the passers-by encouraging and thanking us for our efforts and by the end of our task we had collected a huge number of bags of rubbish - an excellent job everyone! You smashed it yet again!

This was not a day for new or clean running gear and after a quick inspection of who was the muckiest (no contest Paul!) and after a group photo with our bags of goodies (no that should be baddies) and a goodbye to Fiona, we headed back to base.

Some great running by everyone today, particularly the less experienced runners and thanks to Chris and Nick for backmarking today and to Deb for being a lovely and enthusiastic welcoming party!

There are regular Tuesday and Saturday runs coming up over the next few weeks so we look forward to seeing you again very soon.