This Tuesday evening 24 mud larks ate up a 4 mile round trip to right beneath Clifton Suspension Bridge to litter pick the rather messy Portway, once again in time for a big Bristol race to pass by on Sunday.

Rolling deep

Rolling deep as a twenty-odd force to be reckoned with, we followed a brief warm up and introductions with the customary split into fast and sexy groups led by Gary and Dave respectively, for the 1.7m (2.7km) run out to meet our litter-guru from Surfers Against Sewage. Sadly, he was unable to join us at the last minute but we're not to be so easily thwarted so after a brief health and safety top-up (don’t fall in) we got stuck in to filling our sacks with what turned out to be an abundance of river detritus left behind in the wake of recent high-tides.

The difference was remarkable!

30 minutes later the difference was remarkable and we scrambled back roadside for a quick snapshot before splitting again into two groups for the fast 2.1m (3.4km) and the sexy 1.7m (2.7km) return journeys. Gary took the slightly faster group on a scenic route south of the river and through the boat yard, perfectly paced to meet the sexy group back at Queens Square within seconds of one another.

Many of the group, myself included, are running Bristol Half on Saturday so the group were spared a leg-blasting set of drills and instead let off early to enjoy cake back at Vivo, and what a spread there was! Half centurion, Alice dazzled us with her home made peanut butter cups while birthday boy, Dave upped the anti with his double whammy of chocolate thingies and flapjacks which were nowhere near as bad as he'd previously made out.

Well done everyone and special welcome to new comers Sabrina and Jen, (both with a GoodGym Hackney connection) and also to Joe - we hope to see you back again next week.

Good luck to everyone running on Sunday, see you there.