I went out around my local streets on Wednesday evening to do a quick litter pick. At least, that's what I planned to do.

I had chosen Wednesday evening, as Wednesday morning is the day the household waste and recycling is collected on my street.

Despite the best efforts of our council waste collectors, they are no match for Welsh wind and rain, or seagulls. There was bound to be some debris escaping.

I soon came across a particular grubby pathway. It can be easy to feel bad about the state of the world (meant very literally here, or should that be litterally?) but when you can see the proof of your efforts it all becomes a bit easier.

I soon regretted trying to clean up an exposed bin bag placed optimistically next to a bin. It showed signs of a seagull assault. The bag turned out to be rather heavy with food, liquid and something heavy and large. But, nevertheless, I persisted. The street looks slightly better, at least.

The most interesting bit of trash I found was part of what looked like some coving, or maybe part of a fire place. How did it end up on a patch of grass?

Not the weather that we'd hoped for, thankfully the rain was just fine so the painting was still on. We set off on our route, 5 runners heading along the Taff embankment enjoying the Summer greenery. Meanwhile our 2 walkers made their way on a slightly shorter route to the task.

Our task organiser had already set up and was ready and waiting for us, Michael got the goodgym gloves out of his bag whilst showing off the lovely goodgym running jacket. We each got handed a brush and pot, then we made our way to fill our pots with the railing paint. We had three large fence panels to paint, and decided that this was the day that we would finish the task.

Focus

Never has there been such concentration at a task, with a goal in sight there was no stopping us. We smashed our way through the task, finally finishing the panels. We had just enough time to get another helping hand in, there was a new sign to put up so we all jumped in and managed this extra task.

We said our farewells and made our way back to the glassworks, ready for an evening of games and giggles.

Hot weather is here and no one needs an overgrown lawn when they should be outside enjoying the sun! It was several feet high so took a few strims, a few mows, and a few more strims but now the garden is cut back, easier to maintain, and perfectly ready for summer!

We dug out a flowerbed overrun with weeds and dead plants so that a new display of colourful flowers can be planted to match the rest of the beautiful front garden. Of course, we left the gorgeous Hollybush and little strawberry plants, sporting a single strawberry :)
Unfortunately we forgot to take a ‘before’ photo but the SIX sacks full of weeds speaks for itself!

In February 2025 I broke my ankle on a trail run, and although I am out of the cast, walking boot and needing crutches, the return to running has been slow.

Why am I telling you this back story? This isn't a recipe blog, there's surely no need for it.

Well, it's because a couple of weeks ago I realised that GoodGym tasks had given me the activity + achievement feeling. This is similar to the mastery + enjoyment criteria needed for Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's psychological state of optimal experience 'Flow' (not to be confused with the state of Flo, which is me and my appearance). Though, once again I am treating this run report like a recipe blog and not getting to the point.

Litter picking is an easy way for me to feel happy and be active, that returning to couch to 5k is not making me feel as much.

So, off I went to clean up the unclean streets of Cardiff.

I was slightly depressed by filling up my first bag in half a mile. I was further depressed by filling up my second bag in 0.23 of a mile. The third bag took a more promising 0.75 of a mile to fill, partly because I could not put the abandoned armchair into my litter bag, despite my best efforts.

The 4th bag then took 1.44 miles to fill up. This was very promising. I stopped for a coffee at this point.

Part two involved a different route back home. I filled the 5th bag in 1.04 miles, and the 6th bag in 0.41 of a mile.

There was a beautiful pair of discarded shoes. I also noticed that the most popular discarded chocolate bar wrapper was Twix, the most popular discarded can was Stella Artois, and the most popular discarded takeaway coffee cup was McDonalds.

Three GoodGymers headed down to their familiar friend Cardiff junior parkrun on a sunny Sunday morning to help out.

Michael was barcode scanning, Fiona was marshalling at playground, and Flo was run director.

Well done to the 179 finishers who took part in parkrun!

Here are some fun numbers for you.

Yesterday was Cardiff junior parkrun's 444th event.

Out of those 179 parkrunners, 31 had visited for the first time, and 46 parkrunners got a new personal best time.

Cardiff junior parkrun also gave out 5 milestone wristbands:

1 x Half Marathon Wristband - 11 junior parkruns, 3 x Marathon Wristbands - 21 junior parkruns, and 1 x 100 wristband for the same amount of parkruns.

All of this was made possible by the 31 volunteers. Nearly 10% of that was just GoodGym members. 👏👏👏