It was a raining day and six runners - Ingrid, Nicola, Phil, Andy, Audrey and Amatare turned up for the evening group run. The destination was Park Hill Recreation Ground and the task was to help prepare for next month’s Croydon Festival of Peace. We set off in one group after the mandatory briefings, head count and photo shoot. We ran all the way to Park Hill Recreation Ground and made our way to the walled garden located in the park ground.

Our host, Josi, was running late and instructions for the night task were relayed to us through the phone, while she made her way down. The task was to get rid of unwanted plants such as binding weeds and bluebell from the beds and garden paths. We started our task pulling out the weeds and putting them into bin bags. Josi arrived with her friendly, little Maltese Terrier named Poppy and gave us further instructions.

“Poppy’s run off into the Park!” screamed Josi around ten minutes later.

A search party consisting of our host and experienced GoodGym ‘trained dog handlers’ Ingrid and Audrey, went into the wider grounds in search of Poppy, while the rest of us completed our task. Poppy was found and reunited with her owner and it was time for us to leave.

The group proceeded to post the Croydon Festival of Peace flyers into the nearby houses around Park Hill schools. On completion of this excercise, we ran back to HQ – Solution Fitness, did the mandatory stretches ,after which some of the runners proceeded to Box Park for the last Tuesday of the month socials where we had a great time.