On a lovely crisp, bright and slowly warming, early Sunday morning a fabulous five GoodGymers got together at the 9 mile point of the BTR Liverpool Half Marathon to set up a water station. Experience of previous water station tasks meant the team came equipped with rubber gloves (makes a HUGE difference when opening hundreds of screw top bottles, guarding against the usual blisters!), litter pickers for the post run clean up, the GoodGym flag to fly, and some warmed up voices ready to cheer and cheer and cheer!!

We were in the middle of Otterspool so surrounded by trees and just by the gorgeous Mersey River, a beautiful place to spend a spring Sunday morning.

Setting up a table either side of the route, filled with opened water bottles ready for the first runners and then the crowds, we handed out bottles as people hurtled past us, catching their names on their bibs and shouting well done, you're doing great, you got this, and other phrases of encouragement for what felt like a thousand times. All while swiftly opening more and more bottles ready to hand out, working at speed to keep up with the crowds. But the real work began when it was time to clear up the sea of discarded water bottles stretching from the tables and all the way down the prom.

We worked hard emptying out the remaining water in each bottle (watering all the plants as we went) and filling a whopping 36 bin bags! With offerers of help from a couple of young kids and a group of older women on their way for Sunday lunch and lots of thank you's from passers by.

To be fair it took us a good while to clear the entire stretch but the sheer satisfaction of looking back and seeing it all clean, and fresh with no trace of 2000 runners that had just raced, jogged and plodded through was worth every minute.

A huge well done to all who took part in the half and 10 miler including GoodGym friend Jak and new member RJ!!