Hope sprints eternal

It has been a fantastic week of running from the Wandsworth crew, with Andrew recording a great time at the Ealing Half on Sunday, Chris making up part of the first ever GoodGym team to enter the South East of England Road Relays, and several people including Rachel, Lorna and Matthew all smashing park runs at the weekend. You are superstars!

We had a lovely few moments to kick off the night when, as we were doing our warm ups, we went round the group to name our heroes. Top of the rankings was Nelson Mandela, while Mums did very well (and one Mum was actually there to hear it...ahh!), and other assorted family members getting honourable mentions. Derren Brown, Jezza Corbs, Darcy Bussell and, erm, Donald Trump were also named.

We had a 1.3 mile run ahead of us, so we soon set of with Judith kindly backmarking. It was a nice downhill yomp, and we soon arrived at the Venue Community Centre where Hadas was waiting for us with mops, buckets and assorted cleaning equipment. The venue is a much-used space for the local residents, run by volunteers and a community housing champion (the lovely and tireless Hadas) which allows resident associations in the nearby estate access to programs and community building events. It puts on evenings funded by food wastage organisations, and aims to bring residents from the local area together. In fact, we have been kindly invited to one of these nights - a Feast and Film night held on the first Friday of every month where the delicious food served is donated by places like New Covent Garden and Waitrose, and would otherwise be wasted. See you there!

With 40 of us rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck in, the job was done in no time at all, and windows, bathrooms, outside area, kitchen, carpet and entrance areas were all looking sparkling. Great job, team. We waved goodbye to Hadas and set off for Battersea Park to finish the night with a tough fitness session.

It started off with a game of sprint or squat. The idea was to sprint if you could answer yes to the question, squat if you couldn't. As well as a good way to combine speed workouts with conditioning, we also found out who had a secret crush and who had a birthday coming up.

Next we divided up into groups and each completed an exercise while one team ran to the goalposts and back. These included swimming planks, lunges and the dreaded mountain climbers and all targeted core and glutes. Not easy alternating these with hard sprints, but Wandsworth was up to the challenge because you are all machines.

With Andrew and David leading the speedy group back to the BAC, the sexy group set off a few minutes before, and we all tackled the last hill sprint head on together. Another sweaty happy night in Wandsworth. Keep on making a difference, you excellent people. More next week! It's a slightly longer run, but there's a option to take public transport part of the way, and noone ever gets left behind.