Shopping for Mr K, featuring the Saturday newspaper

Kash started the New Year in Surrey, where GoodGym is not yet a thing, so she ran 12km to Feltham, thirsty for an impactful adventure. What could have stood in the way of reaching the mission location? Private roads! Kash had to add a kilometre or so to her original route and arrived slightly late at Mrs N's. The lady was nonetheless delighted to see the GoodGymer again and wished her a happy New Year.

While Mrs N prepared her signature Greek coffee for Kash, her husband, Mr A, explained the priorities of the gardening task. Contrary to Kash's assumptions, it was not the overgrown bush that had to be tackled first, but the paving threatened by patches of grass, brambles, and stems of future bushes that had established themselves between the slabs. Mr A accepted that Kash was unlikely to cut back the bush in the front garden within the 90-minute mission limit... but Kash didn't!

The GoodGymer, being an avid fan of chopping unruly branches, gazed longingly at the bush, but resisted the temptation and swapped secateurs for a trowel to scrape the grass between the slabs. The secateurs came in handy later to cut the woody stems that shouldn't be part of the paving.

After removing all the grass and sweeping the green waste into a pile, Kash concluded with satisfaction that there was still time for trimming the branches she was after. Ten minutes later, the bush got a new haircut, and the heap of cuttings grew twofold. Mrs N was very grateful for the help and said she admired the idea of GoodGym and would have loved to join the community herself if only her back problems and caring for her elderly mum and husband weren't on the way.

On the first day of the year I made my way to Ms L’s by bike riding into the icy wind along the A4 cycle path to Heston.

The fact my back tyre was partially flat made for an interesting and elongated journey but despite this Ms L was very understanding and grateful of the help.

She has been advised she has to clear the overgrown front garden and it has been causing much stress as she’s not well enough to do this herself. Ms L loves her plants and says many of her neighbours comment on how pretty they are when they’re in flower so she doesn’t want to remove them. But she does need and welcome the help to clear the area around the plant pots.

One large heavy duty gardening sack later, the pathway to the front door was clearer. I cycled home via a coffee shop to thaw out with a nice hot drink.

The rest of the clearing could do with a dynamic duo or tremendous trio who like a challenge … in west London, I wonder who that could be?!

Some gardening for Mrs G, tidying up the beds in the front garden

Shopping for Mr K, featuring several cleaning products

We saw off another amazing year of doing good and getting fit in Hounslow last night with a task for an amazing charity, a run/walk that took in some incredible festive displays- and a bit of jeopardy thrown in for good measure!

It was a very Christmassy scene outside the Town Hall at 6:30 last night as GoodGymers met from far and wide, resplendent in Christmas hats and jumpers. Our job for the evening was our traditional end of year task to support the That's a Wrap project. This charity aims to get a gift to every child living in vulnerable circumstances this Christmas. We've supported them the past few years by spreading the word to encourage donations.

We were all set to pick up the leaflets which had been left at the Town Hall earlier that day. Except that - the hall had been locked up early. The grinch had struck!

It took quite some time of pleading, persuading and, let's face it, begging, for somebody to let us in. Thank goodness it eventually worked. We managed to run in and collect the leaflets - it was a Christmas miracle!

With no time to waste, we divided up into walking and running teams and worked out our routes. With 400 leaflets to deliver we needed to make it count. Before too long we were off putting leaflets through letterboxes and enjoying some of the finest Christmas lights Chiswick had to offer.

Fingers crossed all that hard work will result in plenty of donations to That's A Wrap. I'll keep you posted!

Job done, it was off to the pub for a celebratory knees up. There was secret Santa, there was quiz victory, there were festive socks, there was disappointing aubergine. But most of all there was a lot of laughs and plenty of joy to go round.

This year a whopping 70 of you have racked up an amazing 801 good deeds, which is pretty astounding. Five people have got their black tshirt and we have collectively covered over 9000 kms. What a year! Well done to each and every one of you - can't wait to kick off a happy, healthy, fit 2026 with you in January!