The temperature was dropping quickly last night but the energy levels were high for our first group run of 2026.

Maybe that was because we had a lovely warm inside task waiting for us at St Saviour's in Battersea? This church and community hub had asked us for a hand coming to take down the decorations we put up the year before, which nicely coincided with the freezing weather.

Or perhaps it was because we got to welcome Katharine and Rohan to their first session - great to meeting you, both!

It could have been the prospect of a great community mission helping a south London nursery create a space for under fives in the garden this Saturday. Jobs will include removing all old sand from the sandpit, putting in plants, sorting and cleaning the greenhouse and creating a seating area round the fire pit. This will be a fun task that will really make a difference!

I think it probably had a lot to do with the fact that we were coming together for another great year of GoodGyming, running and fun in Wandsworth. We started off with a warm up and pledged how many GoodGym good deeds we wanted to complete in January. Answers ranged from 3 to 125 - which I'm excited about seeing happen!

We enjoyed a nice downhill run to the task where we were met by Layton and Catherine who manage the space. After a few instructions we got started removing baubles from trees, shifting chairs, hoovering up pine needles and the mammoth job of unstringing all the lights around the vast space. Knowing what a tricky job it was unwinding the many metres of string lights when they had not been put away so carefully, Felix and Jordan (having put them up) were extra diligent in packing them away neatly. At the end of the year we'll thank our past selves for doing such a good job.

We got the task done quickly, with Catherine and Layton both commenting that it would have taken them hours. Great work everybody. There was time for a lovely toasty strength and conditioning session on the floor of the centre, and it was good to see that the spirit of insurrection against the weekly fitness session was still alive and kicking this year!

After a run back to the start, we did some stretches and even started making plans for GoodGym Wandsworth's 10th anniversary this year - summer '26 in Paris, anybody? Looking to the more immediate future, we have next week's session to get excited about. We'll be heading to Doddington community garden for our regular task followed by a pub quiz social.