We bed-der work hard - trees' lives are at stake!

The beautiful days seem endless at the moment, adding an extra sprinkling of GG magic to our runs...

Last night we were happy to see a number of lovely new faces joining us for the first time. Give a massive cheer for Ciara, Alison, Debra, Lizzie and Emily, who cam on their first group run!

I mentioned the exciting news last week, but Gardeners' World want to film GoodGym doing their thing, and have chosen one of our favourite tasks in Wandsworth. On 1st August they will be coming to the Doddington & Rollo community roof garden, and it would be great to have as many of you there in your red GoodGym tshirts as possible! The task will be watering, weeding, shifting compost and planting, and it would be amazing to have a big Wandsworth GG crew down there to represent us on the BBC. Sign up here!

We had something very special to celebrate last night, as not one but two of our lovely GG Wandsworth team had both reached that 50 good deed milestone. Absolutely cracking work Emily and Helen, you total stars. These two have committed themselves to do good for their community, I'm pretty sure they deserve a massive cheer!

It was a two task night yesterday, so there was plenty of fun to choose from. En masse we ran over to Harding House, a residential home for deaf people. Our job there was to dig over flower beds and tidy up the garden so that the users there can enjoy the outside space during the lovely weather. So while a large group got digging, a smaller team ran further down to Bramford Community Garden to give their desperate plants a really good watering. The council had recently planted a whole load of new trees there after the community garden had campaigned for them, but the recent spell of hot weather is causing them to struggle. So with water being provided by a local Homebase and the Golden Arches across the road, we got busy ferrying canisters over to the thirsty plants.

Half an hour later we met up with the rest of the group, who by now were having a plank-off in the common, and got stuck into a game of Men V Women stuck in the mud. If you were 'got' you had to do jumping jacks until someone on your team high fived you. The first round, where the women were 'it', was over in record time in a barnstorming victory for the ladies. Was it the slightly uneven numbers, was it the speedy running? Who knows, but it was a lot of fun. We then did some plank variations, holding different plank positions for 30 seconds at a time before moving on to the next one. It's a great core workout, and as we all know, a strong core is vital for good running form.

After a hot and sweaty run back (plus hill!) we stretched it out, and moved on to the bar to celebrate Emily and Helen's excellent achievement. Next week we're running to a local primary school. Sign up here to lend a hand.