Easter Monday? More like Easter RUNday! Last night a group of runners used their chocolatey sugar high wisely, by meeting at a (very closed) BAC. We did not let that put us off, having formulated a plan to hop on the fun train (also known as southern rail) to Putney to help out at a primary school.

But first we had to celebrate our speedy Easter bunnies. Welcome to the lovely Bec who joins us for the very first time. Give her a big GG hello! A huge well done to Ella who ran her very first park run last weekend (she denies she’s hooked, but we don’t believe her). Way to go Rachael who also showed her home crowd what she’s made of at her local park run. To Luke and Tom please extend your finest cheering, as they chased the sun last week and WON. An early pat on the back should head Deepak’s’s way, as he is within touching distance of that magic 50. Help him across the line with a cheer! It would have been Sophie’s’s week to top the distance board if sneaky-legs Matthew hadn’t knocked out a last minute long run yesterday – good job to both of you! Well done to Joanna who nailed her very first 10 k last week. What a basket of top quality good eggs you all are.

We used the short run to the station as a nice little warm up, and arrived at Clapham Junction feeling very much like we were on a lovely school trip. With five minutes to wait until the train arrived, we did not lounge around the platform like kippers, oh no. We used our time wisely by holding a wall squat, earning ourselves glutes of steel and several admiring looks from other non-squatting train users.

There was a small technical glitch when we arrived at Putney when the promised playlist did not want to do its job, so we had a quick and quiet run up the ‘undulating’ hill to Granard Primary School. Our task was to dig a trench in which the children at the school could plant 250 saplings the following day, and we got stuck in straight away. There were some dramatic moments when Dave discovered an Easter Egg (honest – see pic) and Tom was literally ready to spill blood for the good of the trench. Meanwhile Jessie was tidying up all the messy edges, and Bec was digging some of the biggest trench with the tiniest tool. 40 minutes later the job was done, and we were reliably informed that we dug no less than almost 60 feet of trench. Way to work off all that chocolate!

It was time to head back to the train but not without stopping for some fitness games on the way. The Easter bunny had some prizes for the winners, which meant that completion was even fiercer than usual, and the number of tumbles taken higher. We started with The Blob, where a growing chain of runners had to try to tag people to add them to their team. Then was Jog Jog Sprint, which took a perplexingly long time to crack, but we eventually managed it. We finished with a game of Numbers where we not only found out who had had a date in the last week, who knew their prime numbers, and who loved Wandsworth, but also got a few good sprint/tackles in. Technical issues resolved we set off for the run back to the station with our newly instated Wandsworth GoodGym playlist as our background music. Remember, you can add to the list (and please do – no judgement on song choices here) here: https://open.spotify.com/user/monsieurbullfrog/playlist/1vkh31Mku1qkU3nPYkJLRm

All that was left was our Easter Social, which kicked off with a quiz to see who remembered the most past CoRUNdrums. Turns out that Team Most Awesomest lived up to their name by scoring no less than 8.5/10 and won themselves a chocolate bunny for their efforts. Team Whatever and Team RunnerZ were worthy runners up, and everybody had a jolly good time.

For more of the same, sign up to next Monday’s run. We’ll be getting our paint on at a different local school, plus getting good and sweaty at our fitness session afterwards. See you there!

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/painting-at-allfarthing-primary-school