We had a last minute change of task due to a cancellation, so we did a litter pick around the city centre and by the river, taking in all of the lovely sights of Norwich.

This task was to help at the Norwich Love Light Festival.

With the weather rather wet all afternoon combined with the aftermath of Storm Eunice, I wasn't confident many people would turn out in the city for this cultural event.

Luckily, my instincts were wrong, as there was an array of people all around the city centre, and really did give off a vibe of normality returning.

A big welcome to Susie, who was taking part in her first GoodGym adventure.

Myself, Susie, Bobbie, Beks and Penny checked in at The Forum with the advent organisers. We were going to be acting as 'runners' so walking/jogging around the city centre to ensure the stationary marshals had all they needed and everything was going smoothly.

We even had our own walkie talkie, which Beks kindly took responsibility of, apart from when she had to assist with diverting traffic from the road closure.

It was a pleasant evening that felt like Covid was behind us.

Compared to last week's long one, we had a nice short run/walk this week.

Bryony was completing her 10th good deed and Darren has joined the magic 100 club, by completing his 100th good deed.

We gave a big welcome to Hiromasa who was participating in his 1st GoodGym experience.

There was even some GoodGym tourism with Craig visiting us all the way from Exeter!

Katy and Stephen led the runners down to Norwich Train Station while I led the walkers due to my cold (cue your little violins).

On arrival there was a massive pile of Mulch that needed transporting and spreading across the rose beds. Having looked at the pile you'd think "there's no way they'll get all that cleared"... well think again as every single particle was cleared from the pile and onto the rose beds.

We even had Bill and Catherine doing stints on the road crossing as lollipop-man and lollipop-woman respectively.

After a very physical demanding task it was time to head back and some finished the evening off with a pub trip to celebrate Darren's 100th.

Next week we're making Easter Hampers for Break Charity.

Here's what we got up to at this week's Monday Rainy Run.

A big welcome to Dominic (Hannah's other half) and Mark on their 1st GoodGym encounter.

Kathryn and Hannah were completing their 10th good deeds, well done to both of you!

With it being an outdoor task, it was looking grim with the rain belting down. We began with a new style warm-up (after not being allowed to do inside The Forum this week :-|) and then we set off on the short 1.5km trot down to the Norwich Train Station, with Katy kindly being backrunner.

Sue and her amazing team of volunteers met at the Norwich Train Station gardens with an array of spades and forks (puns will be coming up soon). The job we had was to dig up deep rose bushes and the only way to do this was to fork them deep to get the end result we wanted.

As the area wasn't large enough for 26 GoodGymers, I decided we'd fork in pairs so one person would fork while the other ran a loop around Riverside then tagged their buddy and they swap over. This format happened to make it one of our most physical tasks we've had as everyone was both running and forking all evening. By the end of it we were all gleaming and a little wet, from the rain.

After nearly an hour of hard work, we headed back and stopped of in the Xmas tunnel of love for some colourful photos.

As you can imagine, there were plenty of borderline puns for the title of this run report but we voted on Jonathan's more clean cut version.

I had a personal thank you from Sue and her team for what a great job everyone had done at the task so well done everyone.

Next week we are heading to the Norwich Food Bank again to Make Xmas Boxes.

Thursday 18th April

Well, what a beautiful spring evening to gather for a community mission!

We met outside the Norwich Train Station at 6pm where we were greeted, by the Station Adoption Garden Volunteers, with a big pile of woodchip mulch, wheelbarrows, buckets and shovels.

The station volunteers explained that thousands of people use Norwich Train Station every year and the rose bed is a beautiful feature. They are proud of the station and Norwich and wanted the rose bed to do credit to both.

Free green waste mulch had been given by Norwich City Council but storage at the station is limited so they needed extra help to get it moved as fast as possible. The mulch had been dropped off in the side car park at the station.

The mission for GoodGym was to shovel the mulch into the buckets and wheelbarrows, then carry the loaded buckets and barrow the mulch across the car park and over to the rose beds, where the station garden volunteers were carefully distributing it around the roses and tulips.

As it was rush hour on this Thursday before Easter, it was a bit of a 'mission' in itself just getting across the road with a wheelbarrow but it went very safely and smoothly indeed - we were done in no time and soon the big pile of mulch had disappeared from the car park.

The garden bed was beautiful and included the most gorgeous pink tulips, so we decided to have our group photo with the flowers.

Some of us then had a little warm-up and jogged home, or part way home, together, capturing some lovely sunset photos along the river.

Little Jack was the star of tonights mission - what a trooper taking his own wheelbarrow, leading the warm-up and running back faster than all of us! Mission Accomplished! Well done everyone.