Tonight....

It was our 1st birthday, Goodgym Richmond was created one year ago and man it has been a great year! We kicked off and ended the night with.....cake! Wholefoods had lovingly baked a very impressive cake for us and we tucked in straight away but not before a few words were said by Mark our run trainer and also a visit and a few words from Yvonne from Richmond Council and Michelle Luscombe from Vocal Tonix.

After the speeches and the internal combustion from cake we took to the streets for a warm up before heading up Richmond Hill.

As well as the birthday we had a double task... We went back to our roots and took on the beast that is Himalayan Balsalm. And this time the stinging nettles were out in force. Fearlessly, we beat the nettles back to get at the balsam, amidst a haze of blue language.

On the other side the litter pickers surprisingly found a bit of jewellery on their picking way. David wanted to keep it but was told to decorate a bin bag. This led to perhaps the weirdest part of a litter picking task, which were these peculiar stories explaining bizarre costume jewellery in a ditch. Good times! There was also a nice dress as well but sadly it wouldn't fit David!

Making it all worthwhile was very nice man who cycled past and shouted thanks to us as we were at our lowest point...

"Litter picking a nappy from the edge of the road."

Back to the Balsalm, we met an enthusiastic dog owner who suggested we could try a different kind of "weeding": we'd have a much better time he promised (and he looked so happy and dancing to the beat of his own drum that we almost believed him!!!).

The race was on back to Wholefoods. The promise of cake and the smell of food from the high street restaurants gave us the energy to push through to the end. However some of us still couldn't forget the ever so friendly Richmond resident and his bulldog mentioning another sort of weed...he lost us.

He lost us because we were FAST, fast in our tracks to make it back to that delicious Wholefoods cake and the pub of course!

Sooooo much to report and so many threads to this report. It was a full night, a good night, no a great night!

A big thank you to tinkerbell for all her hard work and another big thank you to Wholefoods and their amazing pastry chef for creating such a delicious birthday cake (I don't think we mentioned the cake before now)

Well done to everyone for writing the run report tonight and thank you for taking part in the celebrations, it was memorable and I feel so proud to be part of it. Here's to another year. All that is left is to welcome Regina and Al on their first run, we hope to see you back next week, unfortunately I cannot promise a trip to the pub every week.