20 runners ran 12km to help The Rotary Clubs of Leicester and Leicester Novus raise awareness of World Polio Day

Well it's hard to know where to start, what an amazing evening that really was a privilege to be involved in. After being invited to get involved in this event by Leicester Rotary Club President Chris Saul over the summer it sounded like something incredibly worthwhile to be part of but also a way for our runners to explore new parts of our local community. And boy did it deliver!

A great turnout of GoodGym regulars were delighted to be joined by a swarm of runners joining us for the first time, a warm GG welcome to Rae, Muriel, Arlene, Tina, Kelly, Jenny, Stewart and Chris, we hope you enjoyed the evening. Do come and join us for a group run soon! We also welcomed back Ashley and Nick just two days after their GG group run debut.

The crux of the evening was to raise awareness of World Polio Day and the Rotary Club's international mission to eradicate polio. A service took place at the Leicester Cathedral to mark the occasion while we ran. Our job was to deliver purple crocus corms to other places of worship around the city. Our first leg took us to the Swaminarayan Temple on Gipsy Lane where we were warmly welcomed to an absolutely incredible building, the purple illumination making it look even more stunning. After some chat and pictures we set off on leg 2 heading to the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurudwara where once again we were welcomed with open arms and more fantastic purple illuminations, decorations, ties and turbans! We enjoyed some fruit and samosas while a member of the Gurudwara and Rotary Leicester Novus told us about the Rotary campaign to eradicate polio - internationally they've raised $1.2 BILLION and now Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries in the world left to eradicate the disease.

Leg 3 took us down to the Masjid Umar Mosque where once again we were warmly welcomed. Unfortunately we were behind on our planned timings so had to decline yet more hospitality so we could head back to the cathedral and only be 25 minutes later than planned - sorry about that folks!

As we arrived back at Leicester Cathedral we were greeted by ringing bells and the Presidents of both Rotary Clubs, Chris Saul and Maya Vansia who thanked us for our efforts.

An amazing evening, I'll add more pictures (and probably words) to the report as I get them as so many people took amazing photos.

Thank you everyone for coming along, please share this report and the pictures on your social media channels - the whole point is to raise awareness of the fight to end polio! We have a Facebook page GoodGym Leicester and our Twitter is @GGLeicester where this report is posted if you wish to share. Hopefully we've also made more people aware of the great work GoodGym do in Leicester and we might see a few new tasks and runners in the future!

Thanks to Dave and Stu for leading us around, Jimmy for back marking, Mel and Muriel for taking the crocus corms around to the venues for us and everyone who took such fantastic pictures en route!

Happy running, HD