What a beautiful night for a run! What a fantastic task! And what a lovely final GoodGym run for the wonderful Ade before she heads off on maternity leave. We’ll certainly miss her!

On Tuesday evening, 16 runners met just down the road from our usual Coffee is my Cup of Tea meeting place (due to a problem with the locks). This change of location was quite serendipitous, because we gained a new runner who had been intending to attend London Fields Bootcamp! We warmed up running back and forth between lamp posts, doing increasingly bizarre exercises including a duck walk (which I’m convinced Ade made up on the spot).

The task this evening took us on a 3km run to East Homerton, to help the Daubeney Fields Forever team clear a large patch of land of weeds and moss. We were met by Jo and Gerry from Daubeney Fields Forever, who had put on the dream GoodGym spread: a huge set of rakes, shovels, forks and gloves; hi-viz jackets; a line of cars with their headlights lighting the park and reggae music playing; and (get this) an urn of hot tea and plates of hobnobs!!!! These are the conditions in which GoodGym volunteers come into their own. We smashed the task AND the tea and hobnobs, posed for photos, then headed off into the night.

The group split up for the final run – half taking the direct route back, and the other half the scenic route along the canals. The scenic route was really lovely but took a bit longer than expected… But Ade was there waiting for us, ready to lead the warm down and stretches As Lauren put it on twitter: “Possibly #BestTaskEver” :D

Andy