Six runners swam/ran 6km to start work on the Austin Jackson Memorial Garden for St Matthew's Big Local

Looking out of the window this afternoon I had fears of logging on to the GoodGym website to print off the register and finding that I'd have nobody coming along. Luckily, five hardy souls were still signed up to come along and brave the weather including first timer Caroline. Congratulations on a very soggy first good deed Caroline, hopefully the sun will shine on your next one!

The proper hardcore rain of the afternoon thankfully relented come 6pm and we ran in a mixture of cloudy skies, drizzle and the occasional shower burst across to the St Matthew's Estate where we got stuck into part 1 of a two week project clearing a large border. In arguably the best conditions of the day (not saying much!) we wielded our spades and managed to fill nine large bin bags full from the overgrown border. While it looked a little bit "work in progress" when our time was up we've certainly laid the ground work to make it look brilliant when we return next week.

We then made use of the fantastic running track adjacent to our task and completed two easy laps and an effort lap in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions with a short recovery in between. Just as we were about to leave we discovered that we had a footballing talent within our midst as Sha-Ronaldo showed us a trick shot of incredible skill. As she went to return a ball to the lads playing on the pitch in the middle of the running track she carefully picked up the ball and volleyed it back in their direction...impressive to this point. However, she managed to hit the post upon which the security cameras were mounted sending the ball back over our heads, out of the running track and into the road leaving us all rolling around in stitches! Wonderful stuff!

As rain picked up pace, so did we, as we headed purposefully back to base to dry off.

A brilliant effort tonight everyone, thank you so much for braving such vile conditions to do some good in our local community!

HD