Waterway to spend a planktastic evening

It wasn't looking so good for our Wednesday run yesterday afternoon, with hailstones and storms across London, but thankfully the sun always shines for GoodGym and by the time we met it was all blue skies! Which was good because we had a few things to celebrate...

It's the monthly GoodGym social tonight, and this time it's Southwark's turn to host! Hear what everybody's been up to, cheer the heroes of the month and vote on the best run report pun. You can find all the details here

Fancy a long run with company, a nice route, distance and pace options and a nice bit of food at the end? Then look no further - the monthly long training run is happening next Saturday 18th from Brixton.

it was party time in Hounslow last night as our lovely Michelle hit the magic 100 good deed milestone and earned herself those GG wings! Well done on a huge amount of commitment, positive effect on the community, miles covered - and of course 'those' high knees!

Congratulations also to Matt who continued on a recent PB streak with another parkrun record - way to go!

It may have been raining but it was far from Grim-ley! (Thanks Andy!)

After all that good news we headed outside to warm up and do our weekly poll - which in honour of Michelle's 100th, we made about either Leicester, or the woman of the hour. We enjoy; the cheese, the football team, her debates with Andy, her smile, energy and of course her patented high knees!

Our job last night was for In the Drink - a not-for-profit organisation committed to helping bars, events and boat operators located on our London waterways move towards alternatives to single-use plastic, and which cares about protecting marine environments for a brighter more sustainable future.

After a 2k run down to Kew Bridge we met Paul, one of the founders, who was waiting for us with a load of litter pickers and binbags ready for our task. There are a few areas around Kew Bridge that get very congested with plastic bottles (in the past In the Drink have collected all these bottles up and created a full size paddleboard which they sailed to parliament to highlight the problem) and our job last night was to collect up all the stray plastic. The good news is that it wasn't too bad - which either meant the combination of high tide and heavy rainfall has washed it back into the river, or that things are looking up! Let's hope it was the latter... Either way, our task was done pretty quickly, so we opted for a slightly longer, prettier route back to Turnham Green for our fitness with Eloise carrying the football she had rescued from the Thames ready for repurposing!

The session kicked off with a game to see which team could get their ball to the tree and back quickest - with a few rules in place of course. After a bit of false start and a couple of dodgy throws, it was Michelle's green team that came in poll position! We then moved on to tabata - an intense high energy interval workout that raises metabolism and boosts aerobic capacity. So with jump squats, fast feet, high knees and more in 20 second intervals, we smashed out two rounds of four minutes. Amazing energy everybody! If that wasn't enough, we ended the night with a plank competition which saw a Maisel v. Cowan final faceoff for a seriously impressive three minutes! The pub and cake that followed was definitely earned last night.

Next week we're back to Ealing rd church, homeless shelter and food bank - sign up here - until then, run happy!