Thoroughly enjoyed my first session of 2019 with you fine folk, whilst my return coincided with a 50% reduction in attendance on last week, I'll just try and not take that to heart! As 18 is pretty damn okay with me. We welcomed two lovely new faces, Elise and Rowena, fine additions to our eclectic cumulative lunacy, i'm sure you'll agree.

Our weekly random question was met with some fantastic regaling of travel anecdotes (price to pay - probably a bit on the long side). "Tell us your interesting flight or general travel stories?" We had them all, take your pick from: sprinting through airports, hugging strangers as your plane plummets to sea level with turbulence, piglets running at your naked backside while answering nature's call, chinese grandmothers out-scaring chinese soldiers, incorrect lady boy assumptions and indecent proposals (this week's winner!), bullet train wrong stops, coaches to blackpool, getting stuck in china, having your passport seized, children smuggling (the ok kind), aromatic mega-buses, going to the wrong airport, having your band equipment taken by border control and a few i forgot. Crikey.

First jaunt to Ange's patch, The Adventure Playgorund this year. I arrived as she was telling Dan and James about a lad that got a massive splinter in his eye and another one that broke his elbow! It's all part of their risk-reward system. Kids should be care free and will occasionally get hurt, but they'll be stronger and wiser for it. Opposite of mollycoddling and i've got to admit I quite like it. Anyway - we were set to work on removing some wooden horses, plants, trimming a feral rosemary bush and moving logs by the dozen. For 18 people that takes approx 27mins. Hence by that logic, ~9hours for 1 person. Makes you realise how much of an efficient impact you guys make.

Before we finished up, a small bout of relays, 4 teams of 4 competing over about 300m. It was fast, frenetic but friendly. Good way to imbue some speed into your legs before we wrapped up. Some fine displays of effort out there. "Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else" George Halas. And on that note, i'm a lucky chap.

Hoping we get a good turnout for parkrun this week, go easy(er) on Friday night and let's aim for a big turnout.

sign up for next week's session here and have a spiffing weekend

Till next week,

B

Kev's hundredth Good deed yesterday and it was a real gem of a session.

Crisp but not too cold and a clear night sky. 12 of us fancied helping out the local children's playground over in Hackney Wick. Not before a cake inspired Random Weekly Question, fresh from Tim's brain, inspired by hope, as Kev had some pre-baked treats in his locker. "what's your favourite cake?" Black Forest Gateau, Lemon Drizzle, Victoria Sponge, Triple Chocolate, Carrot Cake and Jamaica Ginger Cake to name a few. After everyone answered they hopefully looked in Kev's direction - looking for confirmation that he brought their favourite...*spoiler alert Kev brought none of these!

We bounced 1.6 miles to the playground for a real sleeves up flash-graft kind of session. Remove 4 massive wooden beams that were deeply driven into the earth and cut back a rather large and feral elderflower tree. Using a selection of tools ranging from saws, pick axes, shovels and spades the guys go to work. 26 minutes later it was all done. Words probably don't do justice to this one, that was some a real unified team effort, almost like you'd done it before. Some even said it was their favourite task ever...certainly was an unrecognisable before and after.

Considering the intensity of the task, I dropped the added core work and just prescribed a little pyramid running session. We rolled through 5 different intensities, slowly turning the screw and getting more dynamic, the type of session that flies by in a group.

That was enough for our Wednesday eve, we bowled on back and had some fig rolls and mars bars, courtesy of the centenary man himself. A team player and tremendously consistent GoodGymer, you've got to 100 in surprisingly quick time (i have no stats to back this up, but a good hunch), also a generally top man. Here's to the next 100 mate.

Right, next week we're rocking and rolling down to Cody Dock. There'll undoubtedly be a well crafted and thought out task by Simon. So get on down, sign up here

Have a smashing weekend replete with some Parkrun tear ups!

B