Shopping for Mr K, this time featuring carrots.

Before we kicked off our run last night, there was plenty of cheering to be done after a busy weekend of racing. We celebrated Florian and Lucy smashing the Big Half, and Jonny completing the triple at the Great North Run. Shout out to Jon for his 250 parkrun. Great running everybody! After some warming up, it was off to our task for the evening, just around the corner.

One of the benefits of going every three weeks to help out at Chiswick House is that we really feel the seasons change and gardens evolve. Last night our job was to clear brambles and ivy from some ancient pillars and stones so they can be repurposed, and there was a feeling of autumn rolling slowly in. The kitchen garden was full of giant sunflowers about to turn, the apples were ripening and there were blackberries for the picking.

We grabbed gloves, loppers and secateurs and began cutting away the overgrowth to reveal some beautiful old stone work. It was a satisfying job to do - have a look at the before and after shots to see what we uncovered! And watch out for the new placement of the pillars around the grounds soon...

It had started to drizzle so we took a brisk run back to Turnham Green where we saw off the night with a three minute mountain leg challenge. The idea is that this drill replicates a hill session - just without having to find any hills! With 90 seconds of step ups and reverse lunges per leg, this is a proper leg blast in an effectively short time.

We have a few community missions coming up which are looking a bit lonely! Can you help? On the 21st there is an opportunity to help out at a lovely community event at St Stephen's conservation area.

If you're up for a bit of saturday night fun, why not sign up for this centenary celebration mission in Gunnersbury? Not only is there the chance to help the community come together, but there is loads of fun stuff happening to enjoy at the same time!

This morning I rode my bike to Oystery parkrun, where I volunteered as a marshal. We were lucky with the weather.It was lovely as always! A few children joined at the last minute, and in total we had 52 participants. 🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️🌞

I cycled over to Hounslow to help a lovely lady to tidy her back garden. Recently her garden had become a little too lively — the weeds have taken centre stage, and foxes were starting to treat it like their personal playground. Understandably, Mrs M was worried that her once-loved garden was being overrun and the weeds would quickly grow out of control.

Luckily Mrs M had had wood chip laid previously and with the recent rain weeds were easy to uproot. What started as several overgrown patches slowly transformed into a tidier space.

After turning the soil I said goodbye to Mrs M and left her to enjoy her afternoon.

Shopping for Mr K, this time featuring broccoli. Did you get the pun?

It was a very damp transition into Autumn for the Hounslow GoodGymers, as they made their way to the final leaf clearing task with Cultivate London. The team quickly got stuck into filling bags with the final batch of leaf mulch and shifting it over to the prep area, where Steph made tipping and compressing leaves look easy!

There was considerable football chat as we got the final load of mulch cleared, ready for Cultivate to pack down the area. Bags were refilled as quickly as they could be taken away for emptying.

We also helped Cultivate with packing up soil bags, tidying pots, and clearing out the compost bins. And we were lucky enough that the rain held off for us, giving us a brief glimpse of a rainbow. To top it all off, we were even blessed with the company of Shadow, the neighborhood cat. After a swift and productive 90 minutes, we ran back towards the town hall for a good stretch.