Early bird GoodGymers were out in force today, with 9 around the course on the day of Maki's - Chikako's daughter's - last Junior parkrun as her birthday is coming soon. They'll both still be at Acton Juniors in the future, volunteering to help the event that they've enjoyed attending for years.

Most of today's marshals were GoodGymers, with Max, Maria, Steph, Michelle and Sevan helping the children and adults navigate the course and cheering them up and down the hills. Kash experienced the hills herself as the tailwalker, playing a key role in getting a couple of less enthusiastic children to the finish line and Chikako was the VI Guide for the last time (for now).

In the funnel, Ariane dished out the finish tokens and Alan was a late substitute to the timekeeper role. As it turned out, Alan saved the day (in a small way), by recording the finish times of the runners more accurately than the other timekeeper, meaning that all 65 finishers were correctly logged.

It was a gloriously sunny afternoon when I knocked on Ms C's door. And also when I said goodbye. In between was a different story as a rain and hail storm was an unwelcome accompaniment for much of my time out in the garden. Fortunately I'd come equipped with good waterproofs and AirPods + a podcast blocked out the sound of thunder.

The back garden was quite large and very overgrown so in the time available, I was only able to do a first pass at weeding it. Nevertheless I managed to fill 12 bags, and Ms C was grateful to see some progress.

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!

Expected a quick shopping trip for Mr G today as part of a double mission which also involved weeding his garden.

However, it turned out that the lightbulb in his windowless bathroom had just gone and he urgently needed a replacement.

This new item on the shopping list turned out to be an unusual bulb type and finding one tested my knowledge of local lighting specialists to the limit. Fortunately, shop number 3 came up with the goods and Mr G was delighted to be spared a weekend in darkness.

He was also pleased to see a new item I picked up in the supermarket for him, chicken korma.

With the light bulb hunt and the usual supermarket visit, I certainly got my steps in for the day.

Thankfully Mr G's garden is fairly small so the weeding afterwards didn't take long.