This evening started with a merry celebration of Katie's 300th good deed and two year anniversary of being Lambeth trainer. Woo! Victoria and Tom dressed all in black and hid in the basketball court expertly decorating gingerbread people into GG runners with sparkly trainers. What more could I want? Thanks gang!

We had three lovely run options:

Group 1 went with Katie down Brixton Road to Kennington Park. The park is being judged on it's Green Flag status on Friday so we helped to tidy it up. One group got busy removing bind weed, another gave the hedges a close shave, some people went on a litter pick and more still did some excellent cleaning of signs all over the park. We did a top job and fingers crossed the park keeps its status as a nice place to be.

Groups 2 and 3 went to GP surgeries to support the GP Food Coop. This great group puts plants and veg in surgeries and hospitals in Lambeth for a nicer environment and also for patients and staff to get involved with.

Group 2 went with Issy up to Streatham. They covered 7.5km and transferred a big bag of soil out pf the surgery, past the security guard and into the garden! They were rewarded with delicious strawberries from task leader Elizabeth's allotment. Yum!

Group 3 went with Tom Hunter to West Norwood...maybe even just Norwood. It was far! 7 runners ran 10km to Crown Dale Surgery in Upper Norwood. Where we were met by Brenda (and Brenda’s excellent doggo Riley). She explained to us all the benefits of the GP Food Co-Op Scheme, in providing community spaces for people to learn about growing some tasty fresh fruit and veg.

We quickly shovelled some soil into the last empty plantar. Then made room for an intriguing sounding vine growing space along the side of the building.

After finally convincing Riley the dog to sit still long enough to be featured in our group photo, we were on our way home. Lovely Summer’s evening for it.

She was so happy! Said Tom Hunter

And with that it was back to base with everyone, some walking lunges, single leg deadlifts and stretches. Then home! Thanks for being great as always - here's to the next 300 runs!

Last night 18 GoodGymers - including two new runners - ran 6k to sand some furniture at Barnet Furniture Centre.

We set off whilst it was still light with Hazel leading and Freya backmarking. Arriving at BFC, Jade dolled out the sandpaper and we got to work - a bench, a table top and legs that needed smoothing down, and some red drawers with hundreds of coats of different colours that needed some serious elbow grease. The group got stuck in and Jade was so thrilled with how much we managed to get done. She'll update us on just how many different colours there were on the red drawers - there at least 5 we could find!

Jade showed us more of the treasure trove that is BFC and explained that they upcycle furniture and either sell it on privately or provide it for free to those in need.

'I like to think of us as the Robin Hood of Furniture!' She said

It's an amazing place and a great opportunity to blow off some steam with a serious bit of elbow grease!

It began drizzling as we warmed ourselves back up for the run home and it didn't stop! Happy and quite sodden the first group to arrive home put on a sterling sprint finish before some stretching and a well deserved biscuit from Hazel.

Shoutout to Shawn who did his first mission this weekend and told us all about it. Missions are a fantastic way to make an impact in a different way to a group run - there is one happening this Sunday (17th) that you don't need to be document checked for - it's a gardening day at St Stephen's House. It's going to be brilliant, make your Saturday even more special by signing up here.

Looking forward to being back at the BFC soon. Well done everyone, a cracking run and task. May the rest of your week unfold just as well!

Lucy J

With the summer holidays in full swing, tonight we were a small group but we still packed a punch and got a lot done between us!

We started our run tonight with a warm up jog down to Walpole for a running technique and drills session before the main event. This consisted of a number of different exercises designed to get our bodies ready for running including some very graceful looking horse style kicking (I promise this is a real running drill!).

We then set off to run to the Elthorne Park stretch of canal on the River Brent where reunited with the wonderful Jack from The Canal & River Trust. This was our second task on this part of the canal and it was great to be back even though it did look like someone had recently had a cider party there and forgot to take all their rubbish home!

Jack split us into two groups, one to tackle an overgrown buddleia bush and make the canal safer for passing cycles and pedestrians and one to paint over the unsightly graffiti on the underpass. Andy, Emily and Larissa were quick to express their interest in painting which involved some lovely boiler suits. It was a strong look guys!

Ronan, Mike and Alex put their hands up to saw and shear the vegetation growing over the towpath whilst I did some ad hoc litter picking between checking on the groups and taking photos, afterwards it was like the cider party had never happened.

Jack always comes really well prepared when he meets us with lots of tools and a number of different tasks we can complete in the location, however the one thing he did forget this week was a wet paint sign! Therefore we've made a little make shift wet paint sign which we will return to paint over next time!

With a good nights work complete we did an Indian file running session to get back to base for a quick stretch and cool down.

Thank you all for coming, every one of you guys are great but special mention this week goes to our visitor Andy from GoodGym Hounslow whose on a mission to get to 50 good deeds before his Wandsworth (friendly) rival! We were deed number 41 on the list so it's getting close now, good luck Andy hopefully see you back with us soon (or will your rival use us to get their numbers up too?!).

Next week we are heading to Ealing Food Bank to help with a bit of maintenance and you can sign up here.

See you next time, happy running :)

A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!

14 happy GoodGym Westminster runners ran 4.5km to do some weeding and watering last night at Oasis Garden Green Gym

For the last few weeks, every time we've been meaning to go to Oasis to water their plants, there has been a massive downpour and alas, our watering skills are no longer needed. Not this time! All 14 of us made it down there after some racing around Hanbury Square - much to the horror of the well-dressed folk attending an event there - to meet the lovely Susannah Trafford who told us all about Green Gym.

Green Gym is quite like Good Gym - only Green! Find out more about how they connect people with green spaces in their community and get them fit here.

After a quick brief we got hard to work - weeding, watering and trying valiantly to replace the correct plant labels with their corresponding plants (not always successfully...). We learnt a host of gardening-related gems such as the way that a courgette grows (it blew my mind) and that there is such a thing as a cucamelon which are pretty much the cutest fruit I've ever seen and a tomatillo, also know as a Mexican husk tomato.

After some learning and some gardening we thanked Susannah and off we went to Russell square for some signature Lucy J planking and more high-fiving sprint-races around the square.

A good deed and some hard work had by all!

Lucy J