It was a military themed run tonight as we gathered at Guildhall ahead of our visit to the Army Welfare Service at The Keep in Kingston. Mark was apparently feeling fragile, but you wouldn’t have known it based on the military style warm up he had in store for us all! Commando crawls under imaginary cargo nets, group body weight exercises and tag team training! It definitely got us all fired up!

What fun we have! #warmup #drills #push #strength #test #goodgym #fitness pic.twitter.com/ejFOLG4L93

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) 20 March 2019

Warm up complete we split into a walking and running group and made our way to North Kingston for a change. When we arrived at The Keep we were greeted by Sue and Corrina from the Army Welfare Service. They explained that this community centre provides family support services to over 200 families who live on the estate from the Army, Air-Force and Navy. They are both very modest heroes who do a huge amount to support these families and help to make military lives and moves a little more bearable.

We split into 2 groups to tackle a couple of different tasks this evening. The first group were helping to clear a garden space of leaves and tame the overgrown bushes. Thankfully Birthday girl Caroline was on hand with her awesome gardening knowledge “I watched Gardeners World at the weekend and now is the perfect time to trim back the Buddleia!” Caroline you are our gardening oracle, clearly getting even wiser with every birthday year!

The gardening group were also joined by some of the older children from the estate who were keen to help out as part of youth club! The tools we all used had been loaned by military families around the estate and it definitely felt like a full team effort! Caroline and Jo took on taming of the bud-less Buddleia, while Nik and Rob tamed the undergrowth with the help of their junior recruits! As the bags were filled and the camouflage bushes chopped back, it was less of a case of seeing the wood for the trees, but instead we could now see the new garden for the leaves!

Meanwhile at the other side of the community centre there was a very different clear up underway. This back garden is used by the younger children and nursery playgroups, but was covered by leaves and included some toys and equipment that had seen better play days! Samia and Hannah sorted through the toys and removed those that were no longer suitable for use. They created a toy graveyard, which reminded us of a scene from Evil Sid’s house in Toy Story! Rubbish cleared away we bagged up the leaves which freed up the decking for the children to play on. Lorena, Martel and Nicky grabbed their buckets and sponges and gave all the toys a good wash down, ready for use by the next morning’s playgroup! Sue and Corrina gratefully commented on the "red whirlwind" that had turned up out of the night and transformed the centre!

We ended the task in style with cake and balloons to celebrate Caroline’s birthday before heading back into the night and back to Druid’s head for some final post run celebrations.

Welcome to Hannah on her first GG Kingston run!

Oh and have a great run Sunday Rob....(maybe Jo too!)

see you next week for some WWF