14 runners + two time trials + one Chiswick House = a whole lot of GG Hounslow fun!

After a last minute cancellation of our scheduled task, we were happy to be asked by the beautiful Chiswick House to come and do some jobs for this stunning trust ahead of the London in Bloom competition. It was our first task at this charity, which relies on donations and volunteers to stay open to the public, but it won't be the last hopefully!

Before we set off on the 1.5k run down there, we said a massive congratulations to Luis who, on Saturday, smashed his first ever parkrun - well done!

If you want to be inspired by some incredible running, get yourself done to Parliament Hill track this Saturday evening. Night of the 10,000m PBs, hosted by Highgate Harriers is an evening of exciting racing action by international athletes. You can volunteer here or just turn up to spectate. There will be quality athletics, there will be beer, there will be cheering.

A little reminder about the GoodGym Olympics. The sign up for events is now live! The deadline is the 3rd June, and there are a variety of events on offer, including egg and spoon, a pancake race, 100m, 400m and relays. The entry page has full list of the events and descriptions of some of the lessor know races (including the GoodGym relay, this year's theme is no one gets left behind...think human caterpillar race). If you haven't been to the GoodGym Olympics before it is a fantastically fun day of competition between the different GoodGym areas followed by a social. Let's DO THIS TEAM HOUNSLOW!

After last night's warm up, when we discussed which period of history we would choose to have been born into (answers ranged from Ancient Greece, through the roaring 20s, glamourous 40s, swinging 60s and right up to somewhere in the future) we set off to Chiswick House and Gardens, stopping for a few squats and toe taps along the way for fun.

While we were waiting for park ranger Jake, we did our first time trial of the night - 400 metres round the crickets boundary. It's a tough distance because you can't take your foot off the pedal at any point, but you guys smashed it with tough to beat individual times. Not long after Jake arrived on his buggy to open up the cricket pavilion and we got stuck into washing down railings and weeding areas around the site. Watched by several flocks of curious parakeets and a number of dogs out on their evening stroll, we set to it, working hard for half an hour preparing the area for the regional competition which Chiswick House has previously won.

Gloves and buckets packed up, we waved goodbye to Jake and got stuck into our fitness session, which was aimed at firing up our major muscle groups in preparation for our second time trial of the evening. The idea is that we 'wake up' these muscles in advance of hard running - you can spend hours working on your glutes and quads but if those muscles are not firing properly then running form is going to suffer. So, after some frogs, decreasing squats, reverse crunches, and planks, we hit the time trial again. Great sprinting tonight everybody, it's so good to see you give it your all. Oh, the fun we had.

It was a gentle and scenic run back to our start point, with Will magically both leading and backmarking, spotting ducklings and stopping for photo ops. Well done tonight, team. Fancy some more next week? Sign up here to help sort out an overgrown plot of land for local residents.