Thirteen was a lucky number last night in Wandsworth, when a team of runners forewent a sunny bank holiday evening in the pub to do some good things for their community. What a great bunch, I think we'll all agree.

A big welcome to Morag who joined us for her first GoodGym run this week - give her a cheer! Massive kudos to Jack who raced 10k that very morning, getting a PB for his efforts, and also did the London mile on Sunday. Is there no stopping him?! Well done also to Matthew, who walked from London to Brighton on the weekend, and has the blisters to prove it.

Before we set off on our run to Doddington & Rollo Community Garden - a rooftop green space in Battersea that is used by people living in the local area who don't otherwise have access to a garden - we had the very important job of deciding what animal we would be. There was the battle of the whales (killer and blue), a number of birds, a mouse, a crab, and a few other creatures great and small. What a happy gang we''d make.

With that, we set off at a steady pace for the garden, which was just over a mile away. We made it in no time at all, and divided ourselves up into teams to tackle the jobs we had been given. The garden was being prepared for the Chelsea Fringe Festival in a couple of weeks, and the organiser, Hilaire, wanted us to make it look as tidy as possible. Morag, James and Amy took on the cleaning of a number of chairs, while Dave, Sally, Sarah, Jordan, Sam and Ella tackled piles of compost. Tom, Jack and Matthew were in charge of picking thousands of bits of broken glass (properly equipped with sturdy gloves, of course) from the flower beds we had turned over a couple of weeks ago.

Jobs done, we were let loose on the strawberry and herb patch, and left on a fruity sugar high with a few bags of herbs for our supper. So healthy! It was then off to Battersea Park for a game or two in the last of the sun. We kicked off with Clusters, with Dave's strategy, which would normally have been successful, backfiring spectacularly. Great job with those press ups though. Then it was Stick in the Mud, followed by The Blob. Anybody passing at that moment may well have wondered what madness have overtaken the line of people holding hands and chanting blobblobblobblob but we were having fun and that's all that matters. We finished off the session with a relay which saw Team BetterGym prevail over Team Injury, but everybody covered themselves in glory with some super sprinting.

Back to the BAC we took ourselves, with some cracking running up the last hill. After a few stretches it was off to the pub to toast Sally's birthday, and to talk tactics for the upcoming GG 'Limpics. Well done for a great run, everybody. You can sign up for some more GoodGym japes right here!

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-out-at-battersea-community-centre