What a brilliant evening last night. Thirteen awesome Goodgymers signed up to help Danson Youth Centre fight back their over grown bushes and hedges. As Danson Youth centre is just opposite our meet location we started running out up towards Welling then looping back to get in a nice 3K run in by the time we arrived at the youth centre. After a quick briefing on our tasks we split into two groups. One tackling the bushes on a walk way at the front and the rest of the crew tackling the leaves, hedges and planting boxes in the back gardens. What makes Bexley Goodgym evenings so awesome is the way everyone comes together to get the jobs done. The great conversations and laughs we all have, and the motivation from everyone when running in our group.

What makes Bexley Goodgym evenings so awesome is the way everyone comes together to get the jobs done. The great conversations and laughs we all have, and the motivation from everyone when running in our group.

So here is what we manage to do in such a short time. We cleared and cut back bushes that were impeding on a foot path. Clean up rubbish that had blown into the garden. Racked up a tone of leaves in the garden. Cut back bushes in the back gardens. Removed weeds and turned over the soil in two big plant boxes. The whole area basically looked brand new when we finished.

I want to welcome Deborah for joining us for the first time. i hope you enjoyed your evening, and hope to see you again next week. Big hi 5 to Neil for looking after the front runners this evening, and looking after the gang at the path tasks as i moved between the two. Much appreciated. I also but really don't want say a sad goodbye to Tanya who is moving to Brighton. Our loss is definitely going to be Brighton Goodgyms gain(look after here guys). Thanks so much for all the hard work you have put in over the months, its been a blast.

Tonights Bexley Goodgym Heroes were:- Tanya, Neil, Deborah, Sharine, Janine, Peter, Akay, Charlie, Lucy, Cheryl, Rose, Fiona and me.

9 GG Brent fitties were fast and furious as they pushed down pavements and paraded their way through tonights leaflet task for Brent's good causes. YAY!!

Now all I can say to start this run report tonight is - What Debs wants Debs gets and when our bride to be requested a track session, how could I refuse!! So armed with our source of good-deeding info sharing leaflets for - The NHS, Granville community food kitchen and some home grown repping for us GG BRENT as well, we got to stepping and paper chased our way through the ends, all the way to Willesden Sports Centre. BOOM!

Oh and thank you mother nature for blessing us with a rain free evening. Really and truly, this will be the first track attack session in a while that hasn't been a wash out! phewwwwww!!!!

So after our community spree which included face to face, library drops and postal passion, we arrived at our home for the eve & let me tell you, these guys were raring to go. Seriously energised and ready for some fabulous fitness fun and games in the form of drills, skills and a lot a lot of HIIT training - THATS High intensity interval training to you and me ;) POW POW!

After some mobilising and skills work, in the form of walking lunges , crab walks and various hop, skip and jumps (No that wasn't into the sandpit although Tabitha would have loved that!!) it was set to work on running 200m sprints, timed and repeated to track pace!

Can I just say at this point, OMG what a set of times, for each and every one!! All achieved even in the midst of some worried faces and moments of self doubt, particularly ironic was the cries from Jo But I'm not a sprinter hummmm really?? As she smashed in under 40 seconds each time!!! Bolt eat your heart out please!

Everyone gave it their all and worked their socks off for the whole session. Huffing, puffing, panting, recovering then going again and again. Special shouts go to Pushpa aka 'mum' who shaved 15 seconds off her first time in round three, living up to her name as she "Pushpa'd" to the max!! Think she was holding out on us and is a cheeky lil speedster at heart!!

After the main event, we finished off the session and the last of the legs with step jumps x 10 for three rounds and with that all jelly legged and understandably exhausted, we jogged the cool down back to base.

Another great evening doing good in Brent, with a HIIT-Fit focus for our resident badass athletes, that really packed a punch!

See you next time fit fam!!

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

As the nights draw in (yes, really) 21 runners covered 7km, swept away sycamore seeds, shifted, lifted, pulled and painted and enjoyed the view.

Every so often we get all excited and plan ahead for what we might do to celebrate a fellow runner's milestone, but sometimes someone might like to quietly put their head down and get on with it, without saying anything. Tonight Jacqueline did just that and completed her 100th good deed!! I only know this now, from looking at her Strava entry, 'My 100th GoodGym at the Seniors'. She's a cheeky one, sneaking that past us without saying. We're fond of a celebration here in Lewisham and WILL NOT be letting this one go without a knees up, so a social is now on the cards for the week after next. Congratulations Jacqueline, we're all very proud and very surprised at the same time :)

Thank you to Steve for the excellent - and apt - title pun!

Lots of our regulars are off enjoying the sunshine elsewhere at the moment, but very kindly keeping us updated, with daily photo updates of sunrise/sunset runs, poolside relaxation and red t-shirts on tour. Those of us still here in a slightly grey south east London (possibly due to the eclipse?) were undeterred by a bit of gloom and were all set for some hills. Joining us this week, all the way from the east was Ian, the trainer for soon-to-launch GoodGym Ipswich. We love welcoming new trainers and showing them the sights, so really put Ian through his paces by appointing him back-marker, along with Sean and Stephen, who are very familiar with the route to Seniors.

Before we headed out to warm up, we had a little celebration of milestones, with a grand presentation of three lovely black 50 t-shirts to Helen, Kim and Stephen, who have been waiting patiently to be able to show off their achievement. Well done you three, I can't wait to see you wearing your tops with pride.

The run over to Seniors is a longer one, but we love the extra opportunity to chat and catch up on the weekend's gossip. It's also a hilly run, but we ran hard and it was great to see everyone picking up the pace to reach the top, even if it was just 'to get it over with'. At Seniors, we were met by Cathy and Norma, who had a few different tasks waiting for us. Cathy went through the various jobs for tonight and everyone found a role and got stuck in. As you can see from the photos, the garden is vast, so there is ample opportunity to spread out and find yourself an area to work in. Tonight's jobs were painting the garden chairs (there are still many more to complete, but what a joy to see some (three) chairs being finished!) and sweeping up sycamore seeds - these pesky fellas are very good (and quick) at taking root and, before you know it, you've got a sapling to deal with.

At the far end, a team of gardeners set to, pulling up the bindweed, which had wound itself around anything that lay in its path, covering a whole area of ground around the raised beds. Along the side of the building were some pallets, which were carried over and laid down next to the existing beds, creating a foundation for some recycled art-handling containers, now destined to become raised beds themselves. In the middle of all this was a shed with a barbecue in it. This barbecue needed pulling out and, to do this, Sean and Michael pulled out everything else and had a jolly good spring clean along the way, great work!

That's an awful lot of work, completed in just half an hour, creating little pockets of transformation throughout the space.

Our return leg took us up and over (again, really well done on the hill climbing everyone, sterling work!). A trip to these parts wouldn't be complete without pausing to enjoy the view of a lit-up London from the top of Blythe Hill, just gorgeous!

Next week we will head out to Crofton Park Community Garden, to work on some more digging, shifting, weeding and so on. I will be away, so this run will be led for the first time by our run leader Conroy. Why not sign up and join in?