Despite the heavens opening just before our meet, drenching everything and everyone and making the prospect of manual labour a little less appealing we had a great turn out, with 17 showing up to do some good.

Fortunately the weather decided to be kind to us, becoming a light drizzle as we started out from Cambridge Heath. Heading off at conversational pace was an ideal opportunity to meet some new people; with several first timers – me included - there was lots of get to know you chat to be had.

The 1 mile warm up took us to the edge of Victoria Park, and across to The Hub cafe where we met the Park Keepers who issued us our tools: brooms and shovels; the task: to rake and tidy the adventure playground. Although everyone wanted to hit the slides (surely the best in London!) we diligently went about our labour, shifting sand from the surrounding paths back into the giant sand-pit and generally making the playground look presentable. In a display of outstanding self-organisation we quickly moulded into an efficient chain-gang with shovellers and sweepers working together like a well-oiled machine. With supervisory bellows from Coach Tom we got the job done in super quick time - a task that doubled up, as I’ve discovered this morning, into a rather intense core session!

As the skies began to clear we set out for stage two of the evening – with no-one opting for the long gentle run we all joined Tom for some interval training. Having never tried anything more than a gentle jog before I was a little apprehensive but with support and motivation from fellow Good-Gymers I got through it, and WOW, did it feel good! We did six 30 second bursts of fast running with 75 seconds recovery between followed by two sets of front and side planks – despite the rain-sodden ground!

A gentle 1 mile run back and five minutes of stretching rounded off the evening. Exercise complete, good deed done, new friends made; all-in-all a rather successful evening.

Ben Craggs, first time GoodGym-er....