With the week commencing with Blue Monday, GoodGym runners took to the streets to make Cardiff green (or should that be red?!) with envy at our ability to do so much good in such a short space of time!

Following on from the successful début performance of GoodGym runners on ITV Wales news last week, new members flocked to join us! We welcomed Katie, Rachel, Sarah and Amy to the Tuesday night shenanigans. Great to run with you all! We hope we didn't scare you and that you join us next week! :D... Remember to bring a friend and you get a red lace too!

GoodGym leader Ben put us through our warm up paces. In amongst the usual high knees and butt kicks, we were tasked with demonstrating our ‘favourite pose’. Some opted for a yoga theme (child’s pose or the dolphin), others went for a Bolt or a hands in the air. It won’t come as a surprise that Emma’s favourite pose is covering her face with her hands!

We were nearly joined by two additional runners. Inspired by our warm glow (or their cans of cider), two men jogged on the spot with us and demonstrated their impressive rapping abilities. Perhaps they will join us next Tuesday...

Jack then led the group who wanted to go further and faster with Ben heading up the group wanting a more direct route to the task.

Aimee was doing a great job of back marking with much chatter about the weekend’s GoodGym tourist run in Bath and the Castell Coch trail run. Having learnt from other runners’ recent experiences, Aimee was mindful of the dangers of crossing roads and, seeing an approaching car, stopped the group...or so she thought. One of the Emma’s (can you guess which one...?) nearly took poor Aimee out by running straight into her and pushing her onto the road! Fear not Ben, we learnt a valuable road safety lesson and continued undeterred (and uninjured) to our task.

The shorter route group arrived at the Severn Primary School and did a short, sharp HIIT session - press ups and jump squats. Ben explained that arm strength was important when running up hills. This will definitely come in useful for our next run in Penarth!

The faster group then arrived and we met Karen and Bev who work at the school.

Karen and Bev explained that the school now has 511 pupils with 50 different languages spoken by pupils! Karen explained that she leads the forest school programme which is aimed at getting children outdoors and supporting their wellbeing. Such a great idea - who ‘wood’ have thought?!

Without further ado, we headed through the school to the outside area. Karen and Bev had done a great job of getting everything ready for us do we could hit the ground running!

Teams set off to give the planters a fresh lick of paint and to paint a series of tyres ready to be used as a plant bed (Everyone looked like they were having wheely good fun!). Some runners were also allocated to painting benches. Others turned their attention to moving one of the sheds. In a scene not too dissimilar from World’s Strongest Man (where they push a double decker bus or plane), an entire group of runners used all their might to lift and shift the shed. Many hands make light work (🏋️♂️) and Karen was thrilled with the new location of her shed! After the shed experience of moving one shed they then moved a cwtch shelter and afterwards Lewis, Emyr Rachel and Jack all gathered together for a cwtch - check out the photo evidence... Darren was waiting by the cwtch shelter for Mikey but Mikey never showed...

Wow, come again?

In almost no time at all, our tasks were complete and it was time to bid farewell to Karen and Bev who are already compiling a list of tasks for our next visit.

Before running off we split into two teams and did a quick challenge where we had to race eachother by rolling tyres around a glove which was approximately 5 metres away and then roll the tyre back! Well done to Jack's team who managed to do this first although the bigger tyre was easier and well done Ben's team who sang "We're singing in the rain" the best - Simon Cowell will be in touch!

Our return run involved battling through hail showers and puddles plus the Strava GoodGym sprint finish segment. Running is tyre-ing! (Thanks for that one Maya!).

Well done GoodGym Cardiff and Vale and to the combined efforts of Darren, Aimee and Maya for today’s run pun; Your combined efforts mean the virtual RunPunStiltskin award is being split into 3 this week!!!

Don't forget to log your run today on Strava or RunKeeper so it counts towards our monthly total. If you have Strava and forgot to record it you can add it manually! And if you haven't yet linked Strava or RunKeeper to your GG account you can do it here