We came, we sawed, we pondered

Two tasks, they said. No problem, we said. LIttle did we know what was ahead of us...

But first....some news:

• Congratulations to everybody who did the Big Half on Sunday in some pretty blustery conditions. Shout out to Hounslow GGers Eloise, Matt, Andy and Jon for some excellent performances.

• We're putting on a community mission plus bootcamp this Sunday morning if anybody is up for it. It will be near Clapham Junction station and it will be fun! Sign up here if you're up for it.

Plastic fantastic and Treesy does it

We had two jobs to do last night, both - at the beginning of the night - sounding pretty straightforward. These were:

1. Doing a plastic pick up for the In the Drink charity organisation at Kew Bridge

2. Removing and sawing up a tree at a local school that had come down in the recent high winds.

So after a warm up and a quick chat about how we treat ourselves- new books, beer, all day in bed - we set off for our first stop. So far, so good. We arrived to find the tools we needed stored for us, identified the tree and a group got to work while the second lot ran down to Kew Bridge to do our plastic pick.

We soon arrived at the organisation, but as much as we looked, high and low, we could not find the litter pickers. Undeterred we donned our gloves and started combing the shoreline for plastic. Grim discoveries included a petrol canister, plastic sheeting, many plastic and glass bottles and more general rubbish which all made its way into our bags which we left for nice Mr Hounslow Council to pick up today. JOb done, we ran back to the school to see how the others were getting on.

Turns out we had left them with a Herculean task. The seemingly little tree that we had to chop up was actually pretty massive, and not at all keen on being moved. It took Matt, Eloise, Remy and Luis some serious sawing, hacking, pulling and persuasion to get the blighter out, but after huge efforts it came away in a moment of glory. After even more sawing and clearing the area we managed to move the beast back to the woodpile. Tree - 0, GoodGym 1.

Sadly that took up the time we needed for our fitness session - don't worry we'll make up for it next week - but we still managed to squeeze in some time to take our '50' photograph. It took a few takes, some creative discussion, and a lot of counting on fingers, but we got there. And I think the result is pretty good! Nice one team.

Next week we have a new task helping to reduce air pollution for kids by sorting out a green space. Sign up here. Until then, run happy, Hounslow.