A good sized crew of 26 headed to Weavers Adventure Playground tonight to give task owner Alex a hand with a variety of interesting tasks…

Hammertime

We headed the short, ½-mile run to the playground where Alex greeted us with an assortment of tools to make a start on the main task: building tables and benches from reclaimed wood. The runners divided into three furniture-assembly teams, and soon the noise of drills, saws and hammers could be heard echoing around the Bethnal Green neighbourhood.

It soon became clear that many hands don’t make so much for light work as no work at Weavers, and so Alex took a team of three task-less runners to dig, wheel and shovel soil into the tyres surrounding the playground’s go-kart track, while another all-female crew of three headed inside to clear the upstairs area of the hall in preparation for an important meeting later in the week.

All teams accomplished a lot, and by 8.05pm Alex was, as usual, a happy customer (unlike some of the runners - this was the third time Polly and Si had returned to finish assembling a table, determined to complete the task tonight, only to discover to their horror that their previous effort had been dismantled…). Despite the fact tonight’s task involved the use of many potentially hazardous tools, it was nonetheless a bit of a miracle the only thing hurt was our pride.

An ABomination…

And so at just after 8, Chi, the birthday boy whose birthday I forgot to mention tonight - ahem - took to the stage to deliver nearly 20 minutes of dazzlingly effective fitness content. He started the runners with squats and quickly progressed to jump squats, before the whole team hit the floor for every kind of abdominal abomination going. It was a brilliant session, leaving no abdominal muscle fibre untouched. Thank you Chi.

And then we were racing back through damp streets to finish with a final stretch on the hotel steps.

Amazing effort, everyone.

And so for tonight’s Group Run thankyou’s and shout-out’s…

Thank you to Bryon and Leanne for leading the team to the task (I had an eleventh hour DBS-delay).

Thank you to Chi for his brilliant fitness session, and for being able to push the team so hard after all their previous hard work! And Happy Birthday, Chi – we’ll (I’ll) make up for it and celebrate next time we see you.

A big warm GG welcome to first time runner Dom – really lovely to have you along tonight and well done for getting so much work done outside, and we hope to see you very soon.

And onto next week…

Next week we’re multi-tasking it: we’re heading to Look Ahead for some indoor decorating and to Margaret at Hollybush for some planting in the planters, so do sign up here.

I hope to see you then, and in the meantime, have a wonderful week.