Well a pretty wet and cold night was definitely much improved by seeing 13 awesome runners out ready to do some good stuff down on the canal!

We started at our usual Bodyline base by welcoming a few new faces to Ealing. Along with a special visit from GoodGym trainer Egg from York/Barnsley, we had Alex who’s currently touring around different groups after recently moving to London, Hannah who isn’t new to GoodGym but is new to Ealing and new runner and first time Goodgymer Brenda!

Huge warm welcome to all of you (to make up for the cold weather!)

We worked our way towards the task by running in Indian file, getting in some sprint work for our fitness session as I knew I wouldn’t be the most popular trainer if I made everyone do jump squats in the rain!

Jack from The Canal & River Trust was ready in waiting for us at the canal and had done an earlier scout out to see what tasks we could get done given the unfavourable conditions.

Everyone was very excited at the prospect of finding some bats using the detector Jack had bought along but unfortunately we weren’t able to find anything! We were hoping the late spell of good weather we’d been having would have continued a little longer and we’d have been able to find some activity before hibernation season but it’s something we’ll definitely try again in the Spring!

With the hope of bats being put on the back burner for now our attention turned to another job Jack had found for us to do, lots of litter picking! Osterley lock had obviously been the place to be for fireworks this year as it looked liked it had seen more than one party over the past week, so we set to work to clear the area of rubbish and discarded rocket shells!

After initial disappointment with the bats (or lack of) I think we were all happy we could still make a difference to the canal and make it a cleaner and safer place to be!

With cold hands and happy faces we headed back for in search of warm layers and hot dinners.

Huge thank you to everyone for coming out this evening and hopefully see you all next time when I'm pleased to say we’ll be working inside in the warm!