A wonderful twelve runners joined me in Walthamstow as we had another cracking night at GoodGym Waltham Forest!

Having covered Hackney and Camden last week I thought it was time to come to the North East and ventured up to the wonderful Mirth, Marvel and Maud the home of GoodGym Waltham Forest!

Tonight we were off to St Mary's Church, a task that GG WF have visited before and Ant had told me that he'd left the key with one of GG WF's regulars... and so it was but unfortunately the key had been misplaced... All however was well as between myself, Ercole and Pippa we concocted a plan that would mean that if we couldn't get into the tool garage we would still be able to do the task!

We have a plan

With everyone gathered, we left Mirth at 7pm and headed out - we had a quick intro on GoodGym and the ways you can get involved (group runs, missions, and coach runs) and welcomed Ros who joined Waltham Forest for the first time and Lauren who joined GoodGym for the first time before heading off with Ercole leading the way.

It was a short run and then after a little investigation we were able to get keys for the lock-up only to find that it was open anyway! With that we grabbed a bunch of tools and headed down to the area we were working in. Everyone got to it and we did the following jobs:

• Raking leaves
• Chopping back some overgrown areas
• Litter picking
• Moving the old compost heap to the new one

Alex and Emy did such a good job raking that we ended up with two huge piles of leaves - it was all hands on deck to get all the leaves scooped up and moved before we ran out of time. Thanks to everyone for pitching in!

It was time to pack up and head off for some fitness... but the key fiasco wasn't over - now we were locked out of the garage! Ercole managed to get to the bottom of the problem and while he scarpered off to find the person with the keys we ran a quick fitness session!

Rock, paper. scissors

With everyone paired up, we played rock, paper, scissors - the 'winner' ran a short out and back and the 'loser' did and exercise for the duration of the winners' run. We went through jump squats, lunges, start jumps and the weirdly named spotty dog!

With everything eventually cleared away, we ran the short distance back and stretched. Top night everyone!

Next week GG Ealing's Olivia is in charge, you can sign up here.

Cheers,
Pritesh