You'd think we'd take a break on bank holidays but no we don't because we're dedicated to helping our community.

As GoodGym Norwich stalwart Bill celebrates his 70th birthday on Wednesday we presented him with a little card. The man is a perfect example of a human being.

Darren was taking part in his last run before the London Marathon on Sunday, he's going to smash it!

No new runners or milestones (unless I missed one!) but Amy kindly volunteered to be back runner this week.

We were visiting Marlpit Community Centre to clear up the car park area, which included cutting back bushes ;-) and brambles, sweeping, raking, hoeing and weeding. The team must've filled over 10 bin fulls, which we then took down to Marlpit Community Garden to compost. As always, the team split themselves to cover all the jobs.

On the way back we had to conquer Grapes Hill (gasp).

Next week we have a longer run (11-12km) as we visit the Bowthorpe Community Garden.

Ignoring rumours of sleet and snow, 7 goodgymers signed up to a community litter pick on the river Wensum.

The weather turned out to be lovely, gorgeous sunshine and a hard frost. Goodgymers ran, cycled and drove to the event, and doubled the numbers picking litter.

After a stirring speech about RiverCare and Weil's disease, we split into 2 groups, with Bill, Katy and Philip going off to the Mill, and the rest of good gym heading in the direction of the pub (we were only a little bit tempted!)

We all quickly got stuck into the standard questions raised by a litter pick:

Why do people put dog poo into a bag and then chuck the bag into the undergrowth? How do you get bottles out of the river without falling in? Why has no-one invented running shoes that transform into wellies? How do you get a submerged motorbike out of the river?

Stuart from the Rivercare group had the answer to the last question – he ran off, came back with 2 grappling hooks and with two teams on the ropes, we managed to drag it out of the river and over to the collection point - at this point it really was both Good and Gym!

Exhausted, we stayed for a little bit longer to add two mattresses, many tyres and a baby bath to the pile of rubbish.

The second group struggled heroically with breaking bin bags and freezing, soggy feet, and we met back at the community centre for some well earned tea and biscuits (thanks for the posh biscuits Sandra!)

Was great to see so many people with head torches tonight... mine looked like something a miner would wear!

Although the run was listed as a 7km distance, when I checked on Google Maps earlier it was saying 9.5km (oops!) but it ended up being about 7.5km so not sure what happened there.

I did supply a couple of packs of biscuits for added incentive and was even tempted to put one on a piece of string for everyone to chase haha.

We headed to Marlpit Community Centre to weed and clear the car park area.

Catherine and Michelle volunteered to be our glamorous back runners this week - thank you ladies even if you did nearly scare me off my bike on my way home afterwards!

We had a decent paced run there and on arrival Mahesh and his team welcomed us and went through the task ahead.

It didn't take long for our GoodGymers to fill up the compost bin and another fantastic job was achieved.

I'm not sure I can mention some of the conversations that were taking place about the firmness of the brooms being used... I'll stop that right there.

On the way back the guys and gals got a chance to open their legs up on Dereham Road. We then regrouped at the bottom of Grapes Hill before tackling that beast and returned to The Forum.

Next week we are running to Silver Road Community Centre to trim a big bush.