Good Morning goodgymmers! Last night two intrepid runners, Ben Cooper and Mridula (me), ran over to Woolwich to help Mrs T do some weeding and chopping. It was an interesting change of pace given that I normally do group runs on Wednesday. Today for the first time I did a mission on a weekday, and ran a good chunk of it by myself. Goodgym, you have done the impossible. I might actually enjoy running.

Ben and I run at the group runs in Greenwich, but since Ben has done Run Leader training, he has frequently had to lead groups in Greenwich and is no longer is able to circulate with the plebs. He does take his job seriously and is very good at it. I on the other hand am a troublemaker, and say such inappropriate things, that large portions of my conversation with Ben had to be redacted from the run report. It was a nice opportunity to be able to have a conversation with him and catch up, though. We arrived at the mission and were quickly assigned our tasks by Mrs. T’s son who told us the pine tree out front needed trimming and we needed to do some weeding in the back.

The pine tree was very tall. We wisely decided that Ben should be the one to climb up on the ladder and do the chopping of the branches. This was because he is 6’2 and when I went to buy a bike, the Evans cycle rep offered to sell me a child cycle, because and I quote “we don’t see a lot of adults as short as you normally”. After a couple of incidents of Ben accidentally dropping pine branches on me we adopted a technique where he would chop a branch and I would swat it away with my hand before I got pine-slapped in the face. For all of you app developers out there, I think we have the goodgym equivalent of angry birds on our hands here.

After chopping down the branches and making sure Ben didn’t fall off the ladder (health and safety first peeps!), Ben and I finally had an opportunity to chat. It was his 50th (mission not birthday) last week, and we had found out he worked in the civil service. I also now finally understood that being in the civil service is not the same as doing community service, and it did not mean that he had once been in prison. However, after repeatedly asking him what he did in the civil service, and still not understanding what that meant, Ben managed to preserve the air of “je ne sais quoi” to him.

He did manage to solve the eternal mystery however, of why men never take out the garbage. IT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO WORK THE BAGS. Ben kept trying to separate the sealed end of the trash bag to open it whilst it was much more effective, as I pointed out, that if you wanted to open the bag, to perhaps try the unsealed end. Something they don’t teach you in run leader training, eh Ben.

We then went to the back to clean up the garden for Mrs. T. She had some bad memories of the area, and it was helpful to be able to be able to make it better by doing something as simple as weeding and tidying up. She is proud of her garden, but perhaps it was too tough for her to do it herself. However, it also made Ben and I realise how poor our knowledge of gardening was even after nearly 100 missions between us (THAT’S RIGHT VICKIE BURNS! IM ALMOST THERE!). To illustrate with this conversational gem:

Mridula: Ben, what is this plant? Ben: I think it’s moss Mridula: Isn’t moss supposed to be more…err.. mossy? Ben: (looks confused)….I suppose. (twenty minutes later when we did find moss). Mridula: I think that is moss. Ben and Mridula: AHHHHH (in realisation).

An hour later we were done! We were profusely thanked for our efforts, and put a smile on Mrs. T’s face. Ben offered to run me back to Charlton station, which he said was mostly downhill. I forgot that from the very first time we ran together, that Ben is a massive liar when it comes to hill gradients. It was a bit of uphill and then nice downhill. I forgive you for your deceit, Mr. Cooper but only because you allowed me to stop and pet a cat and name him Mr. Meowington. And you know, helped me improve my running. And then our mission was complete! Till next time folks, where I will be one step closer to my 50th thanks to sheer number of missions coming up! Join in if you can, and I will show you how to open a garbage bag too!