On the last Goodgym Redbridge of 2019, 11 festive runners met to make Wanstead a tidier place, practiced a pre-parkrun warm up routine and ran 5km in the process!

Over the past year we've been super busy making Redbridge a nicer place to live and getting pretty sweaty in the process. We've washed numerous charity shop windows, shifted mountains of soil and compost, plogged, scrubbed and painted metal gates, fought with ivy and chopped back bushes. We've cleaned out guttering, raked leaves and built bee and bug hotels. We've guerilla gardened and spread the word about global warming. We've done fartlek intervals, Nutter Lane relays and explored just about every lane and street around our base in Wanstead. It's been a blast and I'm excited to do more good deeds in 2020.

The last task of the year was a simple one and involved using our newly purchased (thank you Linda and Sharon) plogging gear to remove some of the Christmas excess on Wanstead Hight Street. Armed with bin bags, gloves and litter pickers the squad headed into the not-so-mean streets of Redbridge to collect those discarded wine bottles, beer cans and strangely a giant, bent, plastic cone. It never fails to surprise us as to what we might find lurking in the bushes around the High Street.

With bin bags overflowing and smiles on their faces, the team headed onwards towards Wanstead Leisure Centre to do a couple of miles warm up before some simple drills that make the perfect pre-parkrun preparation. parkrun on Saturday mornings has become a staple part of many runners' week. However, most don't do a warm up and spend the first half of the race trying to get on top of the increased effort. To help the the team run better at those Christmas day parkruns, Trainer James, led the group through a short selection of drills and exercises that can prepare the body of the intensity of a 5km race. With a bit of luck a few runners might end the year with a new 5km PB!

With the hard work and good deeds done for 2019, all that was left was to celebrate the festive period with a few drinks at our local pub, The George!

And to end the year and the finish the title of this report...

...We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!