With a belly full of cinnamon rolls, 12 London Goodgymers met up with two GoodGym Yorkies, Digby and a couple of local Leicester regulars to tidy up the borders around the Mountsorrel memorial centre. The centre serves the community in a variety of ways, soft play for the kids, art classes and activity sessions for adults with learning difficulties and a multitude of shows and tribute acts to entertain just about anyone.

Despite supposedly having support from the council to maintain the surrounding area, Chris the centre manager was in need of a few helping hands to pull up the weeds. He was so amazed that we’d turned up he couldn’t stop saying thank you before we’d even got started!

We split into groups and started out working on different areas but all finished up in the same section near the entrance. There was some discussion about what should be pulled up and what left behind but we made an executive decision to pull out everything that wasn’t a small tree and left the place looking much tidier than when we started. After posing for a picture with our impressive collection of bin bags we enjoyed teas and coffees from the cafe and chatted about the Rutland half and marathon that most people were running the next day.

In a break from the norm the majority of us had got there by car so Steve and James did a quick lap of the car park before we headed off. If it’s not on Strava it didn’t happen.

Afterwards most of the London lot headed back to base for another delicious BBQ, including Steve’s very tasty s’mores, and a highly competitive game of Pictionary (in case you’re wondering, Team Lambeth won!).

1100 am Saturday morning was the appointed time for our very first starters session at GoodGym Leicester.

Until just a few days before the take up had been a little disappointing but I knew our dependable regulars would not let the side down.

We were delighted to be joined by Deborah from GG Bristol on her grand tour of the UKs GG groups and top respect, like many others who came today she had been a tourist at Braunstone ParkRun earlier.

We also welcomed Rachel, Cathy and Stu as first timers and it was great to see Frank back in the fold.

The task was a simple litterpick along the stretch of canal that we are thinking of adopting and as the crispness went out of the early morning winter air it turned out to be a thoroughly nice day weather wise.

Splitting into two roughly equal teams we set off in opposite directions with a brief of which team could pick the most litter, however, a stern warning… late back and you get disqualified. Cant you just tell I am a great fan of Lord Sugar.

Litter picking may not be the most glamorous task but its easy to get hooked on making sure you get that tricky bit of hard to reach litter. Such was the case with Team Lindsay – whenever I looked along the canal I could only see 3 of their number and that turned out to be because Frank insisted on disappearing into the bushes to get the difficult stuff. Never did find out what it was the led to a huge cheer from his team mates.

Team Jim stuck to keeping in sight and arrived back with seconds to spare. Alas, Franks efforts cost Team Lindsay one second too long so I had to award the victory to Jim but the real winner was the environment as once again in just a few short minutes we had filled several bags with litter and left the waterside looking a little cleaner for the public to enjoy.

Mel relieved the teams of their tools and went of to organise a little surprise while the rest of us went for a warm up jog back to Bede Park for the fitness session.

Suitably warmed we arrived and formed up for some flying 30’s and some hurdle hops. After two rounds it was over to some trees for some wall sits, then with everyone feeling a little bit of burn a final circuit of 30’s. Jeanette sensibly picked up the hop cones before I had time to send everyone over them again – I wasn’t going to anyway (honest!)

And then we revealed the fruits of Mels secret mission – some fresh muffins purchased from the local Tesco, nom nom nom, Oooh we love a bit of cake!!!

A few hundred metres and we were back at base to do our stretches and tuck into those muffins.

With safe journeys and good weekends bid to a our travelling guest and all who had taken part we went our separate ways. I loved this mornings session and it certainly made me realise how much I am looking forward to when the light nights are here again