August means quiet turnouts generally, but there were still a decent handful of members around to welcome Baton to his first ever GoodGym! What a night to join. Beaulieu Community Centre is our furthest task area from the meeting point and it was extremely muggy, so we followed the motto “we get there – eventually” and took it easy on the way up. Andy even managed to find the cut-through we stumbled on last time. We arrived to find Team Car already on site and briefed to clean the windows on the community centre. Martin immediately got put to work on the top bits and swapped a now-traditional backpack of courgettes for a bucket and cloth. Sallyann was absolutely delighted by free courgettes – almost as much as Martin was at managing to actually empty his weighty bag. Fay seemed much less interested, but held off on fish and chips this time (or if she did get some for the drive home, she resisted sharing a photo this time!) A group upstairs were blasting dance music, but the downstairs karate kids were far more discreet. So it was a huge surprise for Joe, mid-squeegee, as the curtains of a now extremely clean window opened and he suddenly had an audience of confused-looking children. The run back from Beaulieu is downhill all the way, but Rich was livid it couldn’t have been downhill to get there as well. In fairness, he’d done a 100 mile bike ride on Monday – the hottest day of the year – from Norwich back to Chelmsford and was clearly still feeling it. Top tip for recovery – a huge amount of pineapple juice, apparently. The weather looks great this weekend so expect some of us at Parkrun, others at the Basildon Inflatable 5k and maybe a deciding grudge match of Poohsticks to settle Joe and Andy’s one-all draw from last weekend. Stay tuned…

Run Happy

Joe