Happy New Year to the 9 runners who ran on our first group run of 2019.

We spoke about up and coming races with Laurie doing the Cambridge Half and Joel and James Brentwood Half, we should all again do the Baddow 10 in May like last year.

We also discussed the January Challenge and the targets to smash!

Not withstanding James rocking up late and a cold wind blowing we headed off to the park to do some "Plogging" Joel, David and Paul led the way out of the University with Catherine and Laurie back marking.

Arriving at the park we did a quick pick around the underpass. We swiftly headed off to Meteor Way and through to Marconi Ponds area to do the main litter pick. Marconi ponds are a nature reserve between the main line railway and the E2V factory on a main thoroughfare to the village housing estate.

Marconi ponds take their name from the Marconi Wireless Company that had several site in Chelmsford over the years and is the birthplace of radio and was originally a water treatment works for the local factories.

With great gusto and an attempt to keep warm Joseph, Jennifer, James quickly started picking up cans and bottles. Catherine kept disappearing into the nature reserve! So when we finished we started to walk through the reserve and had a go at the Activity Trail of fitness equipment, some people need to work on their upper body strength, eh David!

We just had enough time to do a 1km time trial to see if the two weeks away from Goodgym and the gorging over Xmas and the new year had diminished the running ability of the group, this is how they did:

1st David 3:37 2nd Joel 3:38 3rd Paul 3:39 4th Laurie 3:59 5th Jennifer 4:00 6th James 4:04 7th Joseph 4:07 8th Catherine 4:40

We will do this again in a month and see if there is any improvement!

Time to head back to base and those important stretches.

We have an open invitation for this Saturday at 12pm for anyone to come along and have a run and chat with regular Goodgym members and a group run around Central Park, meet at the Cake at the Lake cafe. See you there!