A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!