A sweltering Monday evening saw the GG gang happily leave their places of work and burst from their tubes/trains/buses/cars/bikes (well, bikes not so bad) to gather outside Wholefoods for the eagerly anticipated task of pulling up ragwort in the Ham lands and posting flyers in Twickenham.

But first, the warm-up. Not that much warming up was needed in the hot glow of the Richmond Green sunshine, but Mark was up to his old tricks and after a pretty standard round of exercises he had us crunching and rolling around on the ground like a pack of kids on too much ice cream and candy floss. Then off we trotted in two groups – one group led by Jenna heading to Twickenham Green to post flyers, the other following Mark down along the river to the parkland near Ham House to tackle a marauding horde of ragwort.

What is going on here?! #warmup #fitness #runninggroup #coreworkout #barunfitness #goodgym #mondays #running #volunteering pic.twitter.com/npfVJE8GPc

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) July 23, 2019

Down at the Ham lands the Ragwort Rangers set to work on the enemy – whose proper name is the very appropriate Jacobaea vulgaris, and which also goes by the common names of “staggerwort”, “dog standard”, “cankerwort”, and the quite delightful “stinking willy”. Wikipedia really is a goldmine sometimes. So, armed with our trusty gardening gloves we swarmed into the ragwort territory and started pulling the foul flora up. A few of them came quietly, but some needed real persuading and a few required two of three of us to take up the argument with them. Once out, they proved to make excellent javelins, so a few of us started hurling them back to the pavement (only to realise later we had to gather them up and bring them back). After our allotted time we had done a very fine job, with the yellow-headed yobs expelled from a large area of grassland and piled under an apple tree surrounded by a band of brave red-shirted (and red-faced) conquerors.

Ragwort had us run ragged! #volunteering #hamlands #running #ragwort #doinggood #richmond #goodgym pic.twitter.com/ejSTcvxPHW

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) July 23, 2019

And in the blurry heat of Twickenham the other part of our task this evening was to distribute leaflets for the LAERA (Lincoln Avenue Estate Residents Association) charity picnic to houses within the Twickenham Green area. The picnic event is due to take place on the 27th July and the charity aims to bring the local community together by putting on regular activities such as this. We therefore had to undertake a slightly longer run of 8km from the warm up area where people were busy sunning themselves and headed over Richmond Bridge before going to distribute the leaflets and left Twickenham well informed as all leaflets were dispatched accordingly. What a great experience - a rewarding one, being able to combine exercise, meeting new people and promoting such a worthwhile charity event made it all the more satisfying.

Do you have this much fun with great people on a Monday night? Join us, 6.45pm at Wholefoods in Richmond and do some good #goodgym #mondays #richmond #volunteering #runninggroup pic.twitter.com/QlXVM2Rpd7

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) July 23, 2019

Great work all spreading goodness as far as we could in the borough tonight. Well done Kate for the run at the weekend and Lenka too! Keep at the training Neepa for that half and it was great to welcome you back this evening for your second run with us in Richmond And a BIG welcome too for Adam on his first Richmond run – Awesome start with contributing to writing the run report first run out as well! Super impressive.

Don’t forget all that if you would like a sneaky GG fix mid-week this week too then check this out https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/thames-path-balsam-bashing-bonanza

If not, then roll on next Monday already I say!!

Report written by Adam ... and