Our first run of the year was a total blinder, with loads of fabby new people, some fabby old people and a new trainer - the very lovely Esther who is going to be starting up with Poole very soon.

Trainer Katie waffled on for ages introducing her task force and telling everyone about our jaunt to Liverpool - coming up soon in early March. Do come along!

I've got Tate membership and there is a Tate in Liverpool! Said Tim, giving us yet one more reason to go there in March

We did a nice warm up outside and then Katie led one group 1.5km to the Grove Adventure Playground, with Nicky leading a walking contingent and George and Jim heading off on a longer run towards Clapham Common to pick up any pesky Christmas trees that had been left out and about.

On arrival at the Grove, we got about scraping the paint from around the windows so that they were nice and neat, whilst others did some great sweeping and mopping. We did some ankle conditioning with some simple but actually quite tricky heel lifts.

George and Jim set off to fetch some trees and Phil grabbed one straight away and dragged it to the common as part of some sort of personal resistance training. Once a bit closer to the common, the rest of the group collected up more trees - 15 to be precise - and took them to the recycling depot on the common. As it was Clapham, the sight of 20 runners carrying trees received no less than a Macbeth quote:

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane...

According to George this means that "everyone carring the trees looked like the army carrying trees as they moved forward to attack Macbeth (the witches said Macbeth would be king until the wood reached Dunsinane)." So there we go lads, a bit of Shakespeare for you. As well as running, George led a fitness session and an 'extra special extra run after a dubious people’s vote'.

It's what the people wanted! Said George

Not the first time we have heard that in recent history.

On return to base we all did some nice stretches and headed off home. Thanks for a lovely evening, we got loads done!