Fifteen shades of green

Two intrepid goodgymmers braved the cold, assembled from (polar) opposite sides of London and gathered no less than fifteen green bags of leaves, weeds and ivy.

Jean needed help with clearing the weeds and fallen leaves in her garden. She is unable to do this herself as she's recovering after a fall in the shower: Goodgym to the rescue!

It's astounding how many leaves could fall in one garden. We raked, raked and raked and filled a dozen bags of leaves alone! To put that in perspective, that's more bags that I'd seen on group runs with many more hands.

That's not all. Jay took the shears and trimmed back overhanging ivy and vines from the neighbouring gardens while I became familiar with the deweeding tool. We then filled another three bags of green waste.

Over the two hours we talked about Friday night's pirate ceilidh, Saturday night, GoodGym runs past and present, the NHS and, of course, #GivingTuesday.

Fifteen bags of green waste is a huge achievement and the most I've ever seen on a mission; nice teamwork Jay! We left Jean's garden much tidier and ready for a professional gardener to do the finishing touches.

Jean was well chuffed with the results; she insisted that we took a few tangerines before we left for a quick jog together to the local station and then running and tubing our separate ways.