For our first run of the month, and with the countdown to Christmas well and truly underway, we were back at the beautiful Doddington roof garden.

To kick off the night we welcomed Salaheddine to his first session - lovely to meet you Salaheddine and great having you join us last night!

We did a warm up and discussed our favourite Christmas songs, which ranged from Jingle Bells (in multiple languages) to East 17's classic, Stay. A very diverse mix of festive bangers!

We ran down to the task, stopping to check out one of the tasks for the evening - a massive tonne bag of soil that was looking for a good home! With our eyes on the prize we carried on to the garden, where half the group grabbed tools and went back for the soil, and the other half got on with jobs on site.

While Sophie, Salaheddine, Jordan, Johnnie and Jason tackled the composting and path digging at the roof garden, Catherine, Felix, Matthew, Annabel, Letizia, Steph and Beth were busy digging soil into tugs and wheelbarrows before transporting the heavy mud the kilometer back to Doddington - talk about a good workout! Great to see that the soil - which turned out to be fantastic quality - was put to good use rather than being wasted.

After all that hard work it was almost time to wrap up - but not before a fitness session which really tested our lower body. Featuring pogos, curtsy lunges, squats and jacks we did a five minute finisher which challenged those leg muscles! Great work everybody.

Half of us ran back for stretches while the other half successfully represented GoodGym at the quiz - a job well done all round.

I mentioned a lovely mission happening next Tuesday at the oldest church in Battersea. If you fancy a night helping out at this beautiful location raising funds for the brilliant Katherine Lowe Settlement then please sign up here.

It was another chilly evening in Wandsworth but we still had lots of wonderful people turn up to do some good! As we were about a month out from Christmas (yes, really!) we discussed our favourite festive movies with a wide range taking our fancy. Elf came out on top however and we set off to spread some Goodgym cheer.

We were off to Balham nursery to help them share some flyers to ensure local residents were aware of the great services they offer. We covered off lots of nearby streets (admiring lots of lovely wreaths on doors as we went) and flew through our flyers before we knew it.

We managed a quick spot of fitness on the Common before it was back to base (and off home to get Elf back on the TV). Well done Wandsworth on a great effort and many kms and letterboxes covered!

We had one of our biggest challenges to date in Wandsworth last night, and what's more it was a time crunch situation!

The task: to move ten huge metal orange planters filled with wet clay and stones to their permanent new homes around the Doddington estate. Within 40 minutes. Using only one manual hydraulic lifter.

Did we manage it? Read on to find out more...

What was meant to be a quick Saturday morning task soon emerged as something a lot more complicated! We hadn't realised that the planters, which are bright, cheerful and massive would also be full! They were also a lot heavier and unwieldy then we had expected. We discovered it had taken a crane to get them there in the first place. On top of that, it turned out the dolly we had been given to use had two flat tyres! Things were not looking in our favour.

So, we drafted in the big guns. We shifted our scheduled task for the evening to another night, and arranged to come down with a bigger group last night. Elizabeth, who runs the hub, had also managed to get her hands on a bigger duty lifter from the council - so this time we had a fighting chance!

We divided up into groups and began the job - knowing we had a limited amount of time with the borrowed lifter. If they weren't put in the right place last night, it was never going to happen.

So with Ali taking the helm of the power lifter, half the team began the massive job of moving the smaller planters around the square. Meanwhile the rest got on with shoveling out the soil in what affectionately became known as 'the beast' - the biggest planter of them all.

Time was ticking on, and we decided to forego our usual fitness session in the hope of finishing the task. Besides which, the job was a pretty hardcore workout in itself!

With just minutes to spare the last planter was ceremoniously lowered into position, and I'm happy to report that all ten of them found beautiful new homes where they will cheer up the square and increase bodiversity - and all GG toes and fingers remained intact!

Fantastic job in tricky conditions - well done everybody.

Dates for your diary!

• This weekend we have a lovely community mission in a local nature reserve
• Our upcoming Christmas party on the 15th December
• Next week's session to help deliver flyers for a local nursery

We were back at Doddington for our regular task last night and it was the second consecutive super moon session - but this time it was no ordinary super moon. It was a super beaver moon, the brightest yet this year!

We met as usual at the BAC, where we got to welcome Alice to her first GoodGym session - great to have you join us!

We did a quick warm up where we discussed dog (and one cat) breeds before heading off by the light of the moon to the garden.

As always there were plenty of jobs to do, including leaf clearing, grass pulling and hedge trimming. We divided up into groups and got to work.

The time flew by and before we knew it we just had time to down tools and do our fitness session in the square. This week it was tabata - think fast, dynamic exercises for short bursts. There were lateral leaps, there were squat jumps, there were more steps than you could count. Great effort everybody!

If you've got some time to spare this Saturday and/or next Saturday and would like to help out again at Doddington, please join the weekend sessions - it's a great way to kick off the weekend!

Next Monday we're heading to help create a mud club for under fives - plus a double celebration. See you there!

Last night we #Lifted the Curfew with a special Halloween themed session that got us all out on the dark streets of Wandsworth to do good and get fit.

Our collab with This Girl Can is all about getting active outdoors in the darker months - something very close to our hearts here at GoodGym! Too often women don't feel safe running after dark. We believe there should be no barriers to anybody who wants to get out at night in the place they live, especially to spread some community love. We want to help highlight the message that there should be no curfew for anybody - our city belongs to us all.

So after a warm up, and a quick discussion about our favourite scary movies (this was our spooky Halloween special after all), we headed out towards Lark Hall park for our task.

We talked about what lifting the curfew meant to us.

Some of us noted that we remove headphones when we run at night so we can be hyper aware of what is happening around us. Some said that they take the long way round parks and public spaces to avoid being too isolated. One person had done a self defense workshop put on by This Girl Can just the week before, and many agreed that they would completely avoid poorly lit spaces after dark.

We also had the idea of creating a resource where it could show us the busiest routes are currently happening, and we would welcome a Strava tool which highlighted the safest place for women to run.

As a group we arrived at the park to find the Friends of Lark Hall park waiting for us with tools and instructions. Our job was to tidy up the beds around the trees, remove dead branches, sweep up the leaves, weed and litter pick. There was plenty to keep us going!

It was great to see what could be done with so many pairs of hands working together, and after 40 minutes the place was looking much tidier. We helped put away the tools, and it was lovely to get some appreciation from other park users as we passed!

Job done, we hit up the kids playground for our fitness session. Steph demonstrated how to zipwire in a most elegant fashion, before we divided up into pairs for some frightful fitness featuring zombie fast feet, jumping spiders, vampire squats and a few tricks thrown in for good measure!

There was just time for the skele-run back to base, before enjoying some incredible Halloween treats and a competitive (if small scale) game of pumpkin rolling. A (belated) big shout out to lovely Beth for reaching that magic 50 milestone - give her a massive cheer for doing so much good!

Nice work everybody. Don't forget about our weekend mission at Paradise cooperative garden on Sunday. Next week we're back at Doddington for our monthly session folowed by pub quiz - join us!