High hoe! High hoe! It's up the hill we go!

On a lovely evening in Penge, ten awesome athletes covered between three and four kilometers of running and helped at the Crystal Palace Museum.

Credit for this week's pun goes to both Bradley and Darryl, who combined wordy skills to come up with this little beauty!

What a smashing evening to welcome an absolute first time GoodGymmer! A very warm welcome to Fiona, who chose a great evening to make her debut!

parkrun takeover

• On Saturday May 25th, we will be at South Norwood parkrun, to help with the volunteering and pacing. You can get involved by taking on one of the roles such as marshalling, timekeeping, tail-walking and so on, or you could give pacing a go. Have a look here to find out more and to sign up, it'll be a great way to start your weekend.

• Entries are now open online for the Dino Dash Relay, sign up here and enter the race itself here. It's such good fun!

• Further ahead, but equally as fun, the Petts Wood 10k is open too. Expect a scenic and challenging course, with epic support and a banana AND samosa at the end! Sign up here and enter the race itself here.

Tonight's run was taking us into the park, so we took advantage of this for our warm-up, which involved some very competitive cone grabbing. Ahem. A big thank you to Bradley for leading the way up the steep hill and to Tim for keeping everyone together at the back. We were met at Crystal Palace Museum by Mehul, who explained that we would continue the work done over the weekend at a volunteer day, weeding, spreading mulch and pebbles, digging the path for more slabs and watering the plants. That's a lot to be getting on with!

You can't have tool mulch fun!

Up we went, tools in hand, to get stuck right in. Everyone found something to entertain them, with one team quickly heading up to the tap to fill some water carriers. Hannah and Louise did some weeding along the edge of the path, making way for the good earthy mulch. Meanwhile, at the entrance to the garden, Clare and Nicole had chosen possibly the most challenging job, digging the trench for the slabs, with the ground as hard as concrete after very little rain. They didn't complain though (much) and soon got that dry earth broken up. Throughout the session, we had a steady to and fro of the wheelbarrows and soon the borders were looking neat and tidy, with any gaps were being expertly filled with pebbles (just look at the before and after pictures!).

If you want to explore the museum yourself (and see our handiwork), I noticed there is an open day/tour coming up this Sunday, May 5th. Find out more here.

After our relaxed run back downhill, there was still time to push ourselves a little harder and what better way than introducing the rest of the group to our Summer Time Trial (Ian and Bradley had a go last week). Everyone pushed really hard over what is a challenging 1k lap (while Tim held a plank!). We will aim to repeat this once a month over the summer, so we can see how we are getting on in maintaining our pace or even getting faster over the distance.

Next week we will be in the park again, but this time working in the Secret Garden. There will be a few jobs to choose from, but plenty of lifting and shifting as we spread some gravel along the paths. Sign up here and see you soon!