Welcome back to Donna, Cathy and Adam for their 2nd group run with Kingston…. Looking great in the red shirts too!!

Very timely tonight that our task at Canbury Community Garden was walkable given today’s heat. Although extreme heat gives our run trainer Mark even more energy. Tonight, Mark energized our relay race warm up with some welcome mini water pistols – a tad mini for cooling down many hot runners but still very welcome!

With our Nation’s Biggest Sports Day badges on, in association with I AM TEAM GB, the running group set off on a longer route to the walkers, which became even longer for some of us who eventually arrived a little tomato faced, and ironically matching the cherry tomato takeover going on at Canbury Gardens. The tomato plant seeds got into the compost apparently, or so the Canbury legend goes.

Runners all got stuck straight in like a hive of worker bees tidying all the different areas of the community garden but did make time to meet the resident hens – Henny, Mollie, Lillie, Chocolate and is it Daisy or Princess Lay-a?

Our task was to clear a path to the vegetable beds, so pulling up an old dead hedge, chopping and sawing branches (not as easy as it sounds with some springy saws and springy branches). We were collecting water from the river, watering the tomatoes and courgettes as well as weeding and ridding the beds of brambles/ nettles. All was going well and then unfortunately, rather than do-good worker bees some sleepy wasps took a shine to Kate’s ankle with some nasty stings. Kate, we hope it’s not too painful and you got some ice-cream and are back to running very soon.

After a stunning walk-run back along the Thames which felt more like the Med tonight, the evening rounded off with a post run cheer and flag raising for the Nation’s Biggest Sports Day and hopefully some less cherry tomato faces.

Fresh in as we type from the task owner Marilyn “Thank you and your lovely GoodGym team for your hard work last night - with lots of useful path-clearing and watering (typically it’s raining now but it won’t be very much I think, so last night’s water-hauling won’t be wasted!). We will try to keep the paths clear, but the weeds tend to outpace us and there will certainly be lots to do next time you visit. Hope the bee/wasp sting got better quickly too”.

Great job all see you next week for Searchlight task and don’t forget to look up the parkrun takeover mission 28th September (get signed up)