Delivering Christmas cards makes us Santamental

• Welcome to your first group run Graeme and Amber, great to have you join us!

• A big well done to Frances for doing a sunny weekend of trail races in Ibiza!

• Don't forget it's the GoodGym Christmas party this Friday, and we also have our own Wandsworth Christmas social on the 16th after our last run of the year. Don't miss out!

The chill factor was high last night, but that didn't stop us heading outside after saying our hellos to warm up (a lot) before our task. So after some exercises to get up our heart rates up, we talked about what we hoped to find under the Christmas tree (all the dogs/cats/animals, all the chocolate/wine and trainers. Hope we're all on the 'nice' list!).

After a brisk run down to a Battersea Estate, we were met by Andrew from the Kambala Cares project, an organisation set up to bring residents together and make life better for local people. He had three bags of Christmas cards to deliver, maps to tick off our progress and special keys to get us into all the buildings - that was the theory anyway! We divided up into three groups, each taking a separate section of the estate and got to work like the helpful Christmas elves we are.

While Morag and Sophie's group set off in a highly efficient manner, our group had a bit of a false start and a few issues actually getting into buildings, but as soon as figured out the magic key that let us in, we were flying. As one of our group put it

This must be the key Santa uses to deliver all the presents!

It turned out to be a great workout as well, as all those stairs put our muscles to good use and before long we had delivered most of the cards we had. Shout out to Sophie's group who managed to get rid of all of theirs - amazing work! The Kambala Cares project was really pleased with how much we got done - it would have taken so much longer with just a few of the volunteers delivering them all. We waved goodbye and ran over to the local park with Phil plotting how he could get his hands on one of the magic keys that opens all the doors in the world.

Once we arrived at the park we worked on our ABCs first before moving on to a tough progression run which worked on our pace. Don't forget, sometimes its a good idea to leave your watch behind so you get to know how different paces feel when you're running and helps you control your speed.

Next week we've got a lovely warm inside task helping paint the training rooms for an incredible charity. Sign up here and until then, run happy!