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!

Opening night for GoodGym Barnet was a huge success; 23 incredible GoodGymmers ran almost 4km to rake hay at a local nature reserve.

We were welcomed by our wonderful GoodGym Barnet base, the Phoenix Cinema, and joined by the mayor, Councillor David Longstaff, as well as councillor Sachin Rajput and Age UK representitive Sian Jones.

We ran a mostly downhill route through secret footpaths all the way to Long Lane Nature Reserve, where we were met by Harriet and Wayne who had tools laid out waiting for us. In what proved to be the speediest display of raking and carrying, the Barnet GoodGymmers cleared two areas and built the biggest pile of hay we'd ever seen.

Everyone got stuck in, including councillor Rajput – getting his very smart suit a little dirty!

I then took the team through a quick strength and conditioning workout, smashing out some incredible squats, jumps and lunges. We then ran ourselves back to base (all up hill, surprisingly!) and had a quick stretch.

Oh BONUS: The Phoenix has offered to reward GoodGym Barnet regulars with free cinema tickets. Log 10 tasks in Barnet to get a pair! Brilliant evening. Thank you to everyone who came!

We'll be back next week - see you there!