A tremendous January turnout

It was a lovely sized group of 39 who divided into two terrific tasks tonight for our first Group Run of 2020.

We met in our intimate little hotel room, warm and welcoming, before heading outside to say hello to our new runners, run through our tasks for tonight, give the January Challenge a big shout-out (thank you, Kat & Becki and warm up for the evening's activity.

Two tasks, of course

Task force member Lieke was leading a group of 8 to help Cranbrook Community Food Garden clear a huge Christmas leaf backlog, while I was leading a team to Oxford House where task owner Jess had a big variety of tasks ready for us.

The Cranbrook crew cleared and bagged leaves and repaired netting from vegetable beds, and generally worked tirelessly with task owners Janet and Eileen until the whole garden was FIXED, before clocking up some extra miles, as they raced to join us at Oxford House in time for our fitness session.

Meanwhile over in Derbyshire St, the multiple Oxford House teams set about: litter-picking in front of the arts centre, scrubbing stone steps and window sills, and touching up all the walls of the building. Busy, busy bees.

...And two trainers

At 8 we met in the theatre for this evening's fitness session, where we were lucky enough to be joined by Chi, who started the runners off on a brilliant but tough warm up. He then handed over to me for a lower body and abs interval before re-taking the reins and blitzing abs and upper body a bit more.

Before we knew it, it was time to finish our last rep, and re-join Jess in the reception area for our cheerios and pics, before heading back to the hotel, for a final stretch for the evening.

An incredible night. What a start to the New Year.

Big, big January shout-out's

Big thank you's to our incredible task force who stepped in both over the weekend to lead the second task, and to help plan tonight's run, as the sign-ups just kept on climbing!

Thank you to Chi for fabulous fitness instruction, and for some wicked pics. And thank you to Lieke and Isabelle for fab pics too.

And a HUGE warm welcome to our new runners, Pauline, Alison, Alex, Ellinor, Mathew, Jess and Lucy,. Thank you for being SUCH an asset to our first run of 2020, for doing so much, and for the smiles and fun. Please, please join us again soon.

What's coming up...

On Saturday, we're running an additional session. Yep, this is one for all our regulars, but is especially for our new runners! So, if you're new, or reading this and contemplating joining us, this is your session. It's one of our longest established tasks, it's an amazing gardening task and we have a full and varied fitness session to follow, catering to all fitness abilities, so please do sign up.

Until then, have a great week, and hope to see you very, very soon.