Random abs of kindness

Apparently yesterday was officially the most depressing day of the year.

Not on Wandsworth's watch! We kicked Blue Monday's ass with some random acts of kindness, a couple of brilliant community tasks, an abs blast, a pilates session for runners and some speed work.

We started off the night with one of our favourite things - welcoming lovely new runners to the group. Let's give a massive cheer to Fraser, Nicole, Matthew, Amy, Jessica, Lois and Charlie. Great to have you all with us - hope to see you next week too!

We also congratulated all those super park runners who got out there on Saturday morning. If you haven't done a park run yet, check it out like the 130 000 runners did last week, and prepare to get hooked on the free 5k time trials that take place all over the UK every Saturday morning at 9am.

We had a recap on our January challenge which is getting there. We have a goal of 241 good deeds and 1200 kms this month, so please get linked to Strava and get those good deeds clocked up! A huge well done to everybody who has contributed so much already.

To counteract Blue Monday, we decided to release a kindness bomb on London. Everybody picked out a different random act of kindness from the bag of joy on their way out to the warm up. Our job was to do 43 separate nice things over the course of the week to cheer other people up. We'd love to hear how they went!

During our warm up we were joined by the lovely Laura, the new Tower Hamlets trainer - welcome Laura! - and after a quick knees up to get us warm, we set off for Battersea. It was a short run there, split up with a few conditioning exercises, and we soon arrived ready to tackle a deep clean of the Venue community centre, and to clear a much neglected tunnel.

Hadas, who manages the community centre, told us about the incredible projects the organisation runs. Once a month the team there goes out in the night with hot food and drinks to support the local homeless people. This couldn't be more important in the winter months, so if you'd like to help out then let me know. This great place also puts on Feast and Film nights, where food that would otherwise be thrown away gets made into delicious meals by the brilliant Hadas, and a film (usually highlighting an environmental issue) is played. This community centre is massively important in bringing together the local community, so it's great we can get involved.

While one team set about giving the kitchen, fridges and bathrooms a good clean, the other half nipped down to the a nearby tunnel. This underpass is often a real mess and uncared for, so we set about sweeping, clearing and tidying the place up. After 20 minutes of work it was spotless. Well done team!

While we finished our jobs, we smashed out a quick five minute abs blast before running over to Battersea park where professional pilates instructor Laura took us for an intense pilates for runners session which saw us effectively work our lower body and core. This is really important for good running form and to prevent injuries, so thanks very much Laura!

We also knocked out a bit of pace work during our run back to the Arts Centre, saving something in the tank for that last hill. We needed a good old stretch after all that work. Finishing off the night sweaty but happy we turned Blue Monday a lovely shade of GoodGym red.

Well done everybody! Don't forget that next week we have a special run. Would love to see you there!