We had a Hounslow first to kick off the night yesterday evening - a massive congratulations to [Andy] who is the first of the group to reach that 50 good deed milestone! Give him a huge cheer for this achievement. To celebrate there was cake, lots and lots of cake. We were also treated to a fabulous honey cake made by Remy (who had also run a barnstorming half marathon at the weekend) to mark Rosh Hashanah. Shana Tova everyone!

We were also given our cards by Dave for our team to take part in Hounslow's Beat the Street, welcomed lovely GG ers Alex from Ealing, and Helen and Jordan from Wandsworth, and were very happy to have Jennifer back in the group.

We will rock you

With our task waiting for us just across the road, we had a quick topical chat about our favourite celebrations - Christmas, Passover, St Patrick's day, Norwegian national day and, erm, pancake day all topped the list - and then hopped over to Turnham Green to find Jan waiting for us with tools, bulbs, plants and gloves ready to get stuck in.

Apparently we have had lots of compliments about our previous job on the green where we cleared a huge meadow of thistles, so it was great to move onto the next stage of the job. With Alex and Jennifer tackling the central area planting some beautiful pots, two other teams spread out over the different areas to get to grips with the weeds. The light was fading quickly, but with some headtorches and sheer grit we cleared the rockeries and planted packs of tulip bulbs which we will admire next spring as we do our sprints.

Tulips, two legs

Job done, we moved on to our fitness session, kicking off with some Indian file round the park to get our heart rates up. We then had a quick game of 'grab the light' (the name needs some work) before moving on to the real session, which was a tough one. We concentrated on three areas - core, glutes and arms. Starting with glutes we did six exercises for 45 seconds, including lunges, squats, power skips and hip thrusts before moving onto abs. For that we used the benches to smash out planks, holds, plank jumps and side planks as well as, of course, dead bugs. Finally we tackled those difficult upper body drills with press ups, tricep dips and even an arm wrestle.

After all that, all that was left was to do a good stretching session and to eat cake. Ever run should end with some. Sign up for next week's run, where we will put those beat the street cards to good use.

14 GoodGymers ran 7k around Central London to do as much good as we could.

After our task had cancelled w had to make the most of the warm evening so embarked on something a little different!!

After welcoming to the fold our amazing GoodGym first timers we went through the Good List!!.

On the list we were challenged to do as many of the following as we could in 90 action packed Westminster minutes!!

~1 piece of rubbish per k run ~Speak to 2 homeless people ~Help 1 out of towner with local knowledge. ~Make someone smile ~High five/ fist bump 10 people ~100 lunges ~50 press ups ~50 squats ~5 minutes of planks

We set off with purpose racking up high fives straight out the store on our sightseeing tour around town. After a nice warm up we got to Green Park where we mobilised then lower body and core stabilised with a eclectic range of lunges, planks and skips not to mention a few press ups!

With our body turned we went to help out some out of towners outside Buckingham Palace by Creating a GG photo both, then taking pictures for everyone who wanted, plus some helpful London walking directions!! Creating a lot of smiling happy faces!!

Rounding into St James Park we got little picking clearing up the streets nicely. After a little debate about the Churchill War rooms we replaced the now silent Big Ben Bells with some singing and a big Bong!!

Heading into the River Thames we litter picked, created a finishing line ribbon that turned into a limbo pole, and powered through to Embankment where we hammered out a the second half of the physical challenge, planking, squatting, and press upping the reps away!

A burst along the Strand, Trafalgar Square and dropping some serious pace is up St James's brought us back to base having completed our task to spread the GoodGym love and get fit in the process!!

After a lover key drama 7 of us headed out to Chipotle for a very well deserved refuel and said a sad Goodbye to Ruth and Felicity as they head off on there next adventures!! Thank you both for your energy and enthusiasm every Wednesday!!

I am away next week, Damien will be leading the charge to One Big Family homeless charity!

See you in a couple

Smooth Running

Joel

24 lovely runners ran 8km to help clear weeds and paint at the Scouts in Charlton!

Well the weather was a lot kinder to us last night in comparison to a week ago where it absolutely hammered it down! It was such a perfect evening for a run!

Another long one last night though as we headed back to one of our favourite tasks over in Charlton 4km away, the New Greenwich Scouts! Last week we started on some paint work inside and didn't quite get to finish it but thankfully Alan let us come back and have another go!

We were joined by a fair few new runners again which is always amazing to see! Please give a big cheer to Seb, Florence and Tasha! Welcome guys and gals! Hope you enjoyed your first run with us!

Chips n gravy!

I've been a bit slack recently on the old warm up games so decided to bring a firm favourite out of the woodwork. CHIPS & GRAVY which just involves a lot of running around and if you're quite unlucky, a lot of burpees! But there were also a few smiles so it was definitely worth the minute or two of pain!

After all those burpees, it was time to go, we were already a bit behind schedule (my bad). Ben C led a speedy crew and they were gone in a flash! By the time the rest of us had arrived, they had already got stuck in with some painting and weeding. AWESOME!

Everyone made themselves useful and either grabbed some tools and gloves for the weeding or armed themselves with a roller/paintbrush and began to paint! No hanging around for this squad!

After 25 minutes, the whole area outside had been cleared and Alan FINALLY managed to get the lawnmower on it which he looked VERY excited about. Health and safety siren was going off having seen all the bits flying out the back of that mower.... it looked like a rocket about to take off! But thankfully everyone took a sizeable step back!! It nearly clogged the mower and it sounded like it was going to blow but Alan did NOT care, in fact, I've never seen anyone look so happy! Great job gang!

Over in the paint corner, room 1 was looking lovely and pretty much done whereas room 2 still needed a bit of work. The girls were absolutely going for it! and when it was time for us to leave, I couldn't get them away, they were determined to finish! But sadly we had to call it a day. Until next time...

Sprintervals!

Since we were running short of time, we incorporated the fitness session into the run back in the form of a few sprints between different landmarks meaning we would get home quicker AND get a decent workout at the same time! Double win! It was great to see you pushing yourselves so really well done!

We had a nice little stretch when we got back, ate some cookies and called it a night!

For those of you who are new, please join our GoodGym Greenwich Facebook Group where you can keep up to date with all the races and other fun runs and things we plan. Also if you want to check out Oli's books, here they are on Waterstones (aka everyone's favourite shop!), have a look here! No I'm not on commission but maybe I should be.

Thanks so much for making it last night and putting all your effort into the task and the run! You got so much done so give yourself a pat on the back! See you next week for some more painting action (hopefully).