Lower Castle Park Bridge, the outdoor gym and Bull Meadow are a fair bit cleaner tonight after a good haul by four Goodgym heroes! The secrets we found include a cycle path sign in the ling grass and a cat collar in a ditch...someone out there destroyed a signpost and threw away whilst a cat is now free of a bell and blue collar treatment.

The litter which is all too familiar and not secretive at all is the McDonalds packaging, mars, snickers wrappers, broken beer bottles, cigarettes and plastic bags.

A short chat to a local resident got me thinking about connection...she was a little blunt, without a hello or thank you and fairly opinionated about young people leaving litter behind. But did she take the easy option? Moaning to friendly litter pickers is easy but I wonder if she has ever sat down and chatted to the teenagers at the park? Connect rather than shame and blame?

Anyway...after the litter pick the team attacked Castle Park's hills twice for a sharp fitness burst!

The topsy-turvy weather held off for us other than a light sprinkle as we headed for home!

Marshalled at the beacon at Colchester Castle Park parkrun on a sunny morning, sending people down the hill for laps 1&2 and giving them a last cheer to the finish line after their 3rd lap.

This week and for some time, Colchester will be tinged with sadness. On the week that Goodgym Colchester turned five a five year old tragically lost his life in the town. I was unsure whether to address this in a run report but Goodgym and all people whose careers help others and who give their spare time to help others can reflect and remember that life is precious and acting selflessly is a privilege.

In a ground breaking move, Goodgym Colchester have accepted support from The Gym, whose Assistant manager and Goodgymer Chloe, approached us and offered us a place to start and end our runs and a chance to spread the Goodgym vibes a bit further!

We went on a litter pick in Castle Park and by the River Colne. As we and many know, when there is warm weather there is litter. Just a reminder to anyone reading this who drops litter - it is a myth that people are paid to pick up your litter. The park rangers have plenty more to do, the council also have endless jobs to do other than pick up your litter and volunteers often do it. We do not want to. Dropping litter makes the park unsafe for toddlers and children, for wildlife and pets and the plastic in the river ends up in your food...fish ingest plastics and you probably eat fish! So use bins and take litter home. Simple.

But we love our park and we love the feeling that we make a difference. Safer and cleaner park. YES!

After our litter pick we set up a quick GG Colchester Olympics, with an obstacle course and hurdles combined with a relay! Just like at Parkrun, we were all winners! TEAM GG smashed it.

On our return to The Gym we had some cake and reflected on a lovely and reflective evening.

Volunteered for the first time at parkrun in Colchester Castle Park. Great to see enthusiastic, smiling faces for the return of parkrun! The smiles dissipated slightly at times as they came up to my marshal point half way up a hill, but I did my best to encourage everyone, and keep them from running in to one another!

What a difference the sun makes! The cold air and frost were no match for the Parkrunning, Goodgyming heroes of Colchester.

Ella, Emma, Phil and I welcomed Nicky , Ben and Neil to their first Goodgym experience, but certainly not their first experience of doing good for their communities.

Ella and I were in charge of the Colchester Castle Parkrun tokens with the added job of promoting our Starter Session to the runners! Our very own Emma, Phil and Etienne completed the 5 km course along with Nicky and Neil whilst Ben also volunteered.

So we met and we litter picked! We made a great improvement to Kings Meadow and Bull Meadow but their is still work to be done in the harder to reach areas. As with all litter picking groups big and small the aim is that one day we do not need to litter pick because there is no litter - is that a hopeless dream? Either way we chatted and debated whilst collecting an impressive 3 bags of litter.

The litter picking highlights include finding Michelangelo (not the sculptor the turtle - hence the title), a pair of sunglasses, a tracksuit and £7.10!

A big thanks again to Colchester Borough Council, Keep Britain Tidy, the Park Rangers and Rivercare who support us to do our bit.

Another message I would like to tell you is my personal favourite moment - seeing my best friends toddler enjoying using a litter picker for a few minutes whilst I briefed the adults! That may be the answer to the question above - if our kids hate litter and love helping imagine the difference in our communities!

On Wednesday we are off to Plum Hall to tidy up the outside areas at a Colchester Borough Homes residency.

Enjoy your weekend folks!

The inclement British weather did not put off 15 fearless young GoodGymers from braving the damp air for some pruning and tidying in Colchester Castle park this evening.

The 15 of us slowly drizzled in from 6.45 and we even managed to persuade Sophie to come and play rather than go to the 'normal gym' as she called it. It was great to see faces old and new as we set out in to the park, with an enroute warm up including our usual high knees and side steps. While awaiting the ranger's instructions, we played an 'appreciation' game where each of us chose another GoodGymer and told them something we appreciated about them. This was quite lovely with lots of appreciation for each other's sense of humours, thoughtfulness and inclusion. Warm fuzzies all round.

Simon the park ranger came along with the equipment and we played a game of Simon says where he told us what to do and we did it - much like the real game.... We had secateurs and lobbers aplenty, as well as some good old litter picking equipment. Our job was to cut down the 'suckers' (or the other fancy name that I can't remember) from the high point of the circle of trees around the bandstand. Simon asked us to cut down anything under about 6 foot - Christina made a fabulous measuring point for this purpose. We cleared away a big bag full of odds and ends which resulted in a very aesthetically pleasing eyeline for all those parkrunners.

Tav devised an ingenious bandstand circuits workout for us all. In pairs we completed 8 x 30 seconds of a range of strength and core activities, including planks, push ups and lunges. After that, we ran around the castle and down towards the bottom of the park - a mini park run lap to then finish with some stretches on the bridge.

A lovely evening and I hope you were all happy to come out in the end. I know I was!