30 hot little runners headed 5.4km in the evening sun to rendezvous with a helicopter and a man called Adrian at Agnes Riley community gardens for a variety of gardening tasks.

> GET TO THE CHOPPER!!! 🚁🚁🚁

John was in for Mark this week, and the evening started with some cheers for Paul for surpassing 50 good deeds and to Sarah, Charlotte and Bethan for coming on their first run! CHEERS FOR ALL PLZ! 🙌🙌🙌

Then, despite a few protestations of:

Doesn't GoodGym cancel a run when it's this hot? I've got a bead on!

(hint: no) we split into two groups: a 'quite slow please, I am hot enough already' group led by Lucy, and a 'maybe if we go slightly faster, the breeze will cool us down??' group led by John - and headed UP THE HILL (fml) to Agnes Riley Gardens. Update: breeze tactic only semi-successful.

And what did we find there? Well, for one, a BRIGHT RED HELICOPTER. The power, the majesty, the heroism of the London Air Ambulance crew - all of these were appreciated, but only slightly, compared to shouts of:

OOH THAT'S QUITE A NICE BREEZE ACTUALLY

Turns out that the 1,400hp of the MD902 Explorer Twin Engine Helicopters is much more effective than a Poundland handheld personal fan at wafting cooling currents over 29 sweaty gardeners, and it was tools down for a minute to enjoy the spectacle, majesty, and slight breeze of the chopper's takeoff. 💨💨💨

And also, and more importantly, we found Adrian of the community gardens, who wasted no time in organising 29 eager pairs of hands into crack teams dealing with hoeing, weeding, chopping back hedges (CHOPPING, CHOPPERS, GET IT??), dead-heading and watering. In the warm orange evening light, things were looking pretty tasty as we left, if we may say so ourselves. Adrian was pleased.

Thanks guys! - Adrian

Then it was back down the hill (that's better) with Nicky leading one group this time, and a return to Papa's to enjoy that moment when you stop running in the heat and realise JUST HOW SWEATY YOU ARE. Where's that breezy chopper when you need it?

Nice one Ellie, Josh, Madeline and Ashley for coming on your first GG run - ace to have you along!

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It was all about the gardens today - Ruskin, Styles and Moorlands, all going wild in the Summer heat, so we were on hand to do a bit of taming.

So we had a quick warm up, split into three groups and headed off:

Beth had this to say about her group:

A small but perfectly formed team of six headed to meet Karen at Styles Gardens where she needed a hand tending to the gardens of some residents, as they are currently being overrun with ivy and brambles. We had a selection of tools available, some better than others, and after about half an hour Rebecca and Ashley had been so efficient they moved on to a third garden, with Jim’s words of wisdom about dealing with bracken ringing in their ears. Once we were done we gave Karen a hand taking tools back to Loughborough junction farm and found out about all the exciting projects happening on the site and in the local area.

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Nicky took a group to Moorlands Gardens:

We got to Moorlands to be greeted by Sarah and her team and were quickly set to work doing combinations of digging, chopping and our favourite, bindweed-pulling. After half an hour or so, we'd made two huge piles of bindweed and non-bindweed waste. The team were very pleased and can't wait for us to come back soon.

Good job everyone!

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The rest of us were headed to Ruskin Park Community Garden where we've gradually been ploughing through a long list of jobs there; cutting back a load of brambles, weeding in the fruit cages and moving compost onto the beds.

We then went for a quick brain and body game in the park: Get the fox, chicken and grain up the hill without anything being eaten. Sprints, mixed with some press ups, planks and squats and a warm evening made for a serious (and slightly silly) workout.

We then ran back and went for a drink at the Duke!

Top work GoodGym Lambeth!

See you next week for a little more gardening at Agnes Riley - sign up here.