BRANCHING OUT

13 incredible GoodGym-ers ran / pushed trees almost 5km today to help bring life to an otherwise concrete area.

I (Pennie, Barnet trainer) got to take over this week's run while Jo's away. Things were off to a shakey start, with me forgetting the key to the roastery in North London; but all turned out well in the end, with a number of GoodGym-ers offering their homes up. Luckily Matt lives just up the road, so once intros were out of the way, he lead up to his house for a bag drop – and also a perfect little warm up spot.

After a quick warm up, making sure we fired up those glutes and woke up those ankles, knees and hips, we were off. Matt lead the way to Peckhamplex, while Beth was my trusty back-marker. Lots of newbies with us today, so big welcome to: Claire, Karen, Eleanor, Lucy and Georgie – be sure to give them all a cheer! Sorry if I left anyone out, you're all new to me!

Once we got to the cinema, we thought we hit another hitch: the trees weren't were we were expecting them to be. We decided to run around and hope for the best... luckily we found them, hiding in a car park on the other side of a wall. We ran around to get to them. Slowly, slowly this 900m run was beginning to get serious.

We had 5 massive trees to lug, so took two trips. This is probably one of the most intense GoodGym tasks I've done, with much of the gang saying the same. Luckly, nobody got hit by a car. On round one, Beth lead the way, with three teams of tree-pushers behind her. She was an excellent traffic-stopper. The whole thing was a little scary, but we all agreed you burn extra calories when the adrenaline is pumping and that's what new years is all about.

On round two, Matt and I lead the way, with Michael being an excellent tree-navigator.

We finished with a beautiful tree pose by our transferred trees, then ran back to Matt's house for a stretch and some biscuits.

In Barnet we always have biscuits.

This week's Barnet Biscuit – Southwark Edition was the crowd favourite... the chocolate wafer.

Thank you for running around Peckham with me, folks. Come visit Barnet some time!

Pennie