Thankfully it was back to business as normal last night after a scorching week, and the lovely GoodGym crew was raring to do some serious good in the community!

It was great to see some familiar faces back, and also to welcome Joanna to her very first session - good to have you join us!

Our task for the evening was at the beautiful Paradise Cooperative garden - a community space transformed from derelict land into a thriving garden for local people and children. This amazing place hosts outdoor learning workshops, events for the community and opportunities to grow.

We were meant to be getting out our paintbrushes to give the community space a good going over, but unfortunately the equipment wasn't ready. Instead, given the heat wave, the team asked us to give the polytunnels a good water and weed. So, wasting no time after our 2km run up to the site, we grabbed a watering can and hose pipe and got to work!

It was quite a soothing job, and we happily tended to the garden while identifying some amazing crops, including raspberries, yellow gourds, watermelons, sweetcorn and so much more.

Happily drenched - both us and the garden - we set off for nearby Wandsworth common for a quick and intense core workout that focused on our ab and back muscles. Excellent supermanning, gang!

This week we have so many missions happening, including helping set up tables for a community vaccine event on Thursday evening, Friday lunchtime helping at Ace of Clubs centre and a very quick Sunday task helping a charity load a van. Most excitingly, we have a very special session next Monday evening where we will be planting flowers donated by Wimbledon and then celebrating six whole years of GoodGym Wandsworth with a little post task party! Sign up here] (https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/planting-donated-flowers-from-wimbledon) for all the fun!

Despite everything that is going on, it was amazing to see six GoodGym elves meeting for our last run of the year, ready to get stuck in to a big task for the local community. That's true Christmas spirit!

After a few technical malfunctions with the festive music, we did some warm ups and talked about what we'd most like Santa to bring us this year - it included running kit, Schitt's Creek monopoly (who knew?), a job (def going to happen) and a lie in. You're definitely all on the nice list, so start getting excited!

Just as we began our run down to the local school, the speaker suddenly kicked in, and we all got a bit of a shock as Mariah started singing to us half way down the hill! Nevertheless we got to the school in no time, and got started with a task that doubled as a fitness session. Our job was to shift heavy bags of compost and woodchip - thank goodness for the barrows because it was quite a distance to the secret garden the kids use. We then tackled the mother of all lavender and rosemary roots, while a big pruning job was done. Well done team, fitness + good deed well and truly wrapped up!

After a quick run back we had our end of year social, finding out who was in Taylor Swift's top 1% of listeners, who could take on Clapham's steepest hill in a big coat and normal shoes and crush it, who knows everything there is to know about Bolton's scrap metal salvage scene, who is planning an epic trek in January and who has the best Christmas jumper in the land!

Merry Christmas one and all. Keep an eye out for missions happening over the festive period and I look forward to seeing you back for the first group run on Monday 10th January, when we will also have a triple birthday whammy to celebrate.

Happy holiday running all!

On the coldest night of the year, we totally lucked out with a toasty indoor task, and a cracking one at that!

We met with frosty fingers and tingly toes outside our usual meeting place at the BAC, and it was interesting to see how we all feel the cold to very different degrees. While some of us were decked out in thermals and gloves, other brave souls had stuck to the shorts...brrr!

We did a warm up designed to fire up all those major muscle groups and get the blood pumping, and talked about our best tips to beat the Monday blues. Going for a run, dressing in your fave outfit, eating cheese and even taking a tot of scotch whiskey - take your pick!

Our run was a short one down to Providence House, a local youth centre which uses art and creativity to engage young people in the area. Our task tonight ranked as possibly one of the best ever. The kids are creating a giant jigsaw with messages of peace, and our job was to sand them all down ready for painting. The first step was to put the thing together - surprisingly even on a huge scale and helpfully numbered it was still a bit of a challenge.

Before long we all had a few pieces of jigsaw in our hands and were happily sanding away and getting gradually covered in pretty coloured dust and chatting to the lovely resident art therapist.

Reluctant to face the cold run back and with loads of energy left, the group split into two and set about either clearing leaves or sorting out the kitchen. Three tasks for the price of one! I do think the leaf clearers did have the raw end of the deal though, especially when we came into find that the indoor group had access to some very delicious looking cake - which they were kind enough to share in the end! Although it was just before the fitness session, which made for some very interesting comments during our core blast...

Next week we're helping out at a local school, and make sure you keep your diaries free for this year's bumper Christmas Wandsworth social - after missing it last year, we're going to make up for it on Monday 13th December after the run!

'Tis the season for leaves and we had a great group down in Wandsworth tonight up for the challenge of clearing a local community garden. Rakes, brooms and giant flipper style scoopers were out in force and before long we had used up all the bags given to us! A great excuse for a spot of fitness while we waited for more bags to arrive... thanks guys for your exercise ideas to keep us busy!

Four rolls of bags later (seriously, check out that pile!!) and we could definitely call it a successful night's work. Only thing left to do was embrace the season and literally fall into the leaves as demonstrated by Oliver who also performed some wizardry on our photos making it look like the summer evenings we miss!

Well done Wandsworth and a particular shout out to Catrin for a first Goodgym appearance - we hope to see you again soon!

With perfect conditions for an evening run, 10 GoodGymers met at our usual spot for our second session at a local church garden, where we were helping the volunteers prepare the ground for planting donated roses.

It was certainly a lot nicer weather than the week before where we got completely drenched, so we were in high spirits for our pre-Halloween run and were really happy to welcome Josie to her very first session!

During our warm up we had a quick poll on scary movies - love them or hate them? The results were almost unanimous, with just one horror fan among the whole group!

On our run down to Balham we were entertained with the spooky houses of Wandsworth, counting pumpkins as we went. Soon we had covered the two miles, and arrived to find Marian, lead volunteer, at the church garden with tools and water waiting for us.

We got straight into the flower beds, tackling the weeds and turning over the soil. I'm always amazed at just how much we can achieve together at GoodGym in a short window of time, and this week was no exception. Great job everybody! Marian was really pleased, and it was great to see a task through from start to finish.

Our run back was nice and steady, and we capped all the fun off with a stretching session. Next week we will definitely be running, but I'm just waiting for the task to be confirmed - keep an eye out on the website for more details coming very soon!

Have a great week of happy halloween running - don't forget to treat yourself well!