Bright eyed and bush(y) curtailed

Four fast kilometres

11 lovely GoodGymers

1 local school in need of a hand from us

8 tough glute exercises

Countless box hedges at the mercy of GoodGym!

We kicked off our run tonight with one of our favourite things - lovely new runners! A huge cheer for Frances and Lissolett who joined us for their very first GoodGym group run. Welcome both!

After wishing Luis, Remy, Andy and Michelle a huge good luck for their half marathon on Sunday, and Jon for his league race, there was just time to remind everybody of the volunteering opportunities this weekend. Come along to help out at Tooting parkrun on Saturday morning - meet loads of lovely GoodGymers and help out this amazing organisation - and/or sign up here to help out at the City Run on Sunday to get loads of goodies for your trouble!

• Box-ing Clever*

After heading outside for a very coordinated warm up, we asked our weekly question. Tonight's was:

What is the magic ingredient to make a successful party?

Answers included empty glasses, champagne, good food, good drink, good people...and Luis!

It was short run down to the local school, which has suffered from significant budget cuts recently, and so needs a hand from us. Our job tonight was a big one - to pull up the masses of box hedges that have been attacked by caterpillars over the summer and subsequently died.

So after the usual battle with the gate code, we got in there and found waiting for us tools, bags, gloves and a lot of box hedges waiting for our attention. While Jon and Frances got cracking sweeping up leaves on the drive, a group headed round to the front of the school to start the onslaught on the first section of hedges, while the other half got cracking on the other lot of hedges - which turned out to be gnarly little spikers!

40 minutes later there were considerably fewer bushes blighting the school landscape , we had enjoyed a great upper body workout and we had just figured how to open the gate from the inside.

After a nice steady run back to Turnham Green, we played a quick game to get some good sprints in, and then got to work on our glutes. With eight different exercises, including skaters, one legged squats, sumo walks, frogs and squat pulses, we gave these important muscles a good work out. This is particularly important to do regularly, as strong glutes keep our pelvises aligned as we run and prevent twisting and potential injury.

All that was left was a good stretching session and to look forward to next week, when we will [helping spread the word about a Christmas toy drive for a local charity) (https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/spreading-the-word-about-a-christmas-toy-drive)- see you then team!