Mulch ado about nothing

Last night we we had some competition. Despite the summer evening, Winter was coming. Still, 30 runners resisted GOT night, and turned up to Wandsworth's 49th ever run. Next week is our golden anniversary run, which is pretty cool.

Speaking of cool, we had some excellent new people joining us for their first run yesterday. Put your hands together for Jaya, Jessica and Hannah, people. A special mention goes to Remo who didn't get a shout out last week for being an brilliant person and coming to his first GoodGym run due to a (ahem) technical error. Welcome!

After saying a massive happy birthday to Jo, who was also topping the good deeds table, and a well done to Jack for covering the greatest distance, we cheered all those runners who nailed park runs on Saturday. Well done, athletes.

Taking ourselves outside for some dynamic warm ups, we did a quick headcount and found out what we wanted to be when we were kids. There were a surprising number of ballerinas, a pop star, one candle maker, and two Spice Girls. And an accountant.

It was a slightly longer run this week down to one of our favourite community gardens, so we set off at a steady pace stopping for some one legged squats to help the group stick together. Two miles later we had arrived at Wendelsworth community orchard (the first in the borough!) to check on our lovely GG Wandsworth tree which was in cherry-scented splendour.

Wasting no time, we had the run down from Martin who split us into two groups and cracked on with our tasks. The first group had to tackle an big old pile of paving stones, shifting them around the garden to create pathways . What a brilliant upper body work out. The second group were working on a massive pile of branches, clipping them up into small segments to fill leaf pens which will become mulch to lay over beds.

After half an hour of tough work, we waved goodbye to the garden (we'll be back soon to sort out the leaf pens) and had a faster run up to Wandsworth Common to smash a round of very tough circuits. 10 stations of 45 seconds each, and man were they tough. From press ups with shoulder taps, burpees, v crunches and sprints to one particularly tricky pretzel-like plank twisty thing, this circuit was a hard mixture of strengthening and cardio exercises.

All that was left was to peg it back to the Battersea Arts Centre, sprinting up the last hill (always a killer) and stretching it out before popping to the bar to sing happy birthday to Jo. Next week it's our golden run, sign up now for some glittery do-gooding running.