Ah, what a lovely run! With the sun beaming down on us once again, loads of great people met up at Vivo Sports Club to run to the charity Emmeaus which is dedicated to helping homeless people finding employment and get themselves in to their own homes.

The run there was pleasantly uneventful, and we made it to our task in good time where we met with Jessica from Emmeaus who introduced us to the charity and also told us how to say the name! (Em-may-ous is the phonetic spelling). She handed up gloves and tools and the gang set to weeding all around the building.

She also kitted Darren and Chris L up in steel toe capped boots (that she just happened to have on hand....), gave them a sledgehammer and pointed them in the direction of some cobbles that needed smashing. DARREN SMASH! CHRIS SMASH! HULK SMASH...sorry, getting carried away.... Chips were flying everywhere, cobbles were obliterated, and then rest of the team dived in to clear the cobbles away as as fast as possible, in some cases using a random wok that they'd found.

They also planted some flowering shrubs; Jessica had planted a hydrangea a few weeks ago and no one had sat on it or squashed it, so she felt it was safe to plant a few more shrubs.

As they weeded, a lovely selection of rubbish was found. Today's highlights included:
A traffic cone.
Half a bottle of vodka
A full and unopened bottle of cider (rather nice cider, but no one wanted to drink it!).

We did a lot but there's still more to do, so we'll be back next week to continue smashing the cobbles (some of the ladies fancy a go!), trim bushes, weed and do random things with cooking implements.

Lastly HUGE congrats to Matthew, Emily and Kim who've done their 50th, 50th and 200th run respectively. Also a MAHOOOOSIVE Goodgym welcome to newbies Fran, Harriet, Debbie and Lisa. Thanks for coming to run with us and we hope you'll be back.

To check if you actually read this run report, next week the code word is 'pink wafers'. Say it to me at some point in the run. There's no prize, I just sometimes wonder who gets all the way to the end of my reports!