Last night saw the return of group runs and 12 lovely GoodGymers came out for the occasion!

On what was one of the hottest days of the year we were certainly feeling the heat but nothing was going to stop us meeting for a run to do good after over a year of not being able to run together!

Our original task for the evening was to dig over a patch of land in the William Hobbayne Half Acre Wood but with sky high temperatures and no rain the ground was far too hard for that! So plan b was tackling the overgrown brambles on the pathways instead.

Huge well done to everyone for braving the heat and getting stuck in, we’ll be back in the wood in a couple of weeks when hopefully the weather will have broken and the rain will make the ground dig-able!

19 turned out to be the perfect number of people for last night’s task to help St. Mary’s get their ivy under control!

In honour of The Great British Bake off returning to our screens we did a quick warm up with a chat about our favourite cakes whilst welcoming four new runners into the fold. Great to have Chris, Lizzy, Zoe and Sonam with us for their first GoodGym run! Now about those cakes, sticky toffee pudding (is it a cake or a pudding?!) and lemon drizzle were clear favourites which was good news as Alex had baked a lemon cake for the group to enjoy after after the run. Something to work for!

The long or short of it

We had two route options last night, Chris led a lovely longer park route and Jenni led the direct route to the task. Thanks to Harvey for back marking the longer route while I led a walk run on the shorter option. Tell your friends, we have options for everyone!

Arriving at the task we were met by Vicar Steve who was all set up for us to get straight to it and the task today was all about battling the ivy to the front of the building.

What lies beneath...

Many hands make light work and we were soon uncovering grave stones that hadn’t seen day light for some time, along with pulling back ivy from the walls and trees in the garden. It’s a tough job as ivy really does like to hang on for dear life but by the time we had left the difference was amazing!

Raking it in

The last job was to scoop up all the ivy and deposit it for composting, after initially struggling to collect it all by hand the magic rake appeared to make the job a whole lot easier!

’That would have taken me 10 hours worth of work on my own!’

As Steve pointed out that’s a lot of time and an overwhelming job for one person but with us there it’s all mopped up in one night. Go team!

We finished up by using the church gardens for our fitness session where we worked in pairs to practice some good high knee form with resistance bands and some partner core exercises too.

After all the hard work we had definitely earned a trip to the pub so after a jog back we headed to one of our favourite Ealing pubs and shared some baked treats. We also toasted to Alex’s 100 good deed and Michelle’s 50 good deed achievements from last month!

See you all next time!