Yesterday saw the very first GoodGym Women's Night Run, and what a run it was!

Ten of us met up underneath the bright lights of the iconic London eye, and not even the increasing rain could dampen our enthusiasm.

The idea of the run was to break down any barriers to women running, primarily safety issues. So after a brief welcome, we each met our buddy for the evening - someone would be would be looking out for on the run so that nobody would be left behind at any point. We then did a warm up and went round the group introducing ourselves. Lucy also had the great idea of adding in a little fact as well, so we learned who had recently entered a big mountain race, who couldn't wait to run along the riverside, and who had a weekend of missions ahead of them. A huge congratulations goes to Helen who recently qualified for the tri ironman champs - absolutely incredible!

Soon it was time to set off, and we began our planned route along the Thames. We hit a good steady pace, swapping round backmarkers so everybody got a chance to chat, and taking in the sights. We passed Big Ben reflected in the water, paused for a picture by the Battersea Power Station Christmas Tree and sailed past Westminster under the cover of darkness.

It was a real joy to be running at night as a group, chatting all the way, pushing the pace when we felt like it, and hearing about everybody's goals and achievements. Hopefully this will be the first of more sessions like these. Please spread the word, let me know if you'd like to put on a run together, and most of all, keep running.

There's lots to shout about this week! First and foremost, it was great to see Loz and Inessa come along to their first group run last night - brilliant to have you join us. Give them a cheer!

We've got some fun things to look forward to, including the Women's Night Run on Thursday where we will be doing a beautiful riverside route together, and the monthly GoodGym drinks for all the different GG groups. It's a fun social where everybody is welcome - hope to see you there!

Not only that, but we also had a new task location to head to, with a big job for Rollo Residents' Association in Battersea. Before heading off we did our warm up to get all the major muscle groups fired up, and I must be losing what few brain cells I have left as I almost forgot to do our weekly question for the second week running - thanks for the reminder! We asked ourselves how many tube stops start with the letter 'G' (for GoodGym of course), and with guesses ranging from 4 to 27, we had one person who was spot on - well done to Steph who gave the correct answer of 11!

We took a nice downhill route to the Rollo estate where we found Hadas waiting for us with a whole load of tools, gloves and plants. There were a number of jobs to do, including shifting compost, digging over soil and moving huge planters. We soon got cracking making full use of the resources we had. The most transformative task was to plant a load of beautiful Pakistan lilies (or were they tulips...there was some debate) in the newly created bed. If you're interested to see what they're going to look like when they bloom, then check our the stunning flowers we can expect!. There's no doubt that they will really brighten the place up.

Main jobs done, we finished the session with a super speedy weed blitz, dropped off some shelving at the community centre, then headed back to the BAC for our fitness session.

Every week we focus on a different type of exercise - sometimes its conditioning, sometimes strength, tabata, speed or form. And sometimes it's just a bit of fun, like last week's Halloween themed session! This week's challenge was, gulp, hill sprints. Not everybody's favourite, but it's a brilliant strength and endurance building exercise. If you want to find out more and get some inspiration for different hill based workouts then check out this article. We paired up and challenged ourselves to do three hard efforts up the big hill each. Everybody exploded up that slope (which definitely was longer than it first appeared!) in very impressive form. Great work everybody.

Next week we're doing a big litter pick and a little tidy up at the BAC permablitz garden - you can sign up here. I promise there will be no hill sprints!

It was great to see a brilliant turn out for what we hoped would be the final push for a huge task at the allotments- well done to the whole team for making it out on a Saturday afternoon and especially to Loz, Fiona, Theo and Dave who joined for their first session! A huge welcome to you. Our task was to bag up all the stuff blocking the border so that the council can get in to put in a brand new fence. As many of the allotment holders are older they would really struggle so that’s where GG stepped in! We got cracking stuffing bags full of organic waste, coming across not an unsubstantial number of spiders as we worked. It is Halloween after all! 90 minutes of hard work flew by, and the huge pile of full bags was testament to our progress. Amazing job all, thank you for all your efforts. Don’t forget we have missions throughout the week, and every Monday is our group run from the BAC. Tonight’s run is a fun spooky themed session followed by our monthly pub quiz- here are the links with all the info. Hope to see you there!

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/jobs-at-doddington-roof-garden-61c0a4cd-9e1e-45ad-9917-b0e14afc70e5

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/post-run-pub-quiz-f45115f6-8cee-499f-80be-a85d4fa6fa25