With no official task this evening, we were set the job of one of our favourite past times...

PLOGGING !

We had a big turn out tonight including new GoodGymer May who did absolutely brilliantly on her first group run.. but more on that later! There were so many achievements to catch up on including Andrew who is on a parkrun PB streak, Louise who smashed her Half Marathon PB in Bath yesterday, and Paul who completed his first ever Ultra 50K! It was also Charlotte's turn to adorn the Geordie cloak of Good Deeds after completing her 50th Good Deed in her coach run the week before last. Doesn't she look splendid in it?!

We also had a catch up following a weekend packed with Community Missions. Massive well done to everyone for keeping the good deeds coming every weekend. There's another one this Sunday at Harbottle Park if you'd like to get involved.

But on to tonight!

We did a multi-exercise warm up in which many many instances of cheating happened and set off on the run with the conversation topic "What's the stupidest thing you've ever done?" in honour of Paul's Ultra. I definitely won't tell you who was once sick in the gutter on a date. At breakfast. We met the walking group at the corner of Leazes Park where the group split into smaller teams to go plogging around the perimeter fences of Leazes Park and the RVI opposite. Two challenges were set: find the weirdest thing and find the most rubbish. The competitive sides started to show and in just 25 minutes, bags were packed full of all manner of weird and wonderful things including a Lambrini bottle complete with straw, a traffic cone and many many takeaway cartons. Plogging is good for the soul and everyone was happy to have the time to catch up while making this busy area of town look so much better!

On to the fitness session and Tempo Surge was the order of the night. We had a fabulous area of Leazes Park all to ourselves and it was just brilliant! This interval session is a fun way of working in teams and doing short bursts of unstructured fast running while supporting and encouraging each other through it. Everyone did so well tonight that it was hard to pick out a stand-out performance, but in the end the award went to new GoodGymer May for her brilliant sprint technique on her very first session. She was the proud recipient of a pink chemistry set (it's a long story) which we hope will come in handy for her medical school interview next week.

Well done to all on another great start to the week. Next week we are back off to Newcastle Uni to help our friends at NEST. It's another short run with a walking option so feel free to share the sign-up page with some newbies who might fancy coming along! You can get involved here

See you next week.

Happy running and walking!

Anji x