Despite the threat of rain and the run down to tonight’s gardening task at Askham Court being longer than the 6km advertised due to my questionable navigational skills in previous weeks, a fantastic 24 GoodGym-ers joined me on a humid Tuesday evening in H&F to run and do good! A big warm welcome to the 5 fab new runners Zoe, Kira, Sharron, Meriel and Garrett on their first GoodGym run, it was lovely to have you along! Hopefully see you all again on another group run soon It was great to also see Fiona and Luke along for their second and third group runs and gardening debuts, and to have Tatty from GG Hounslow and the ‘good deed machine’ Danny from GG Brent doing some GoodGym tourism!

Before we headed outside, with everyone gathered around we had a brief introduction and round-up of the news from the week…

1. GoodGym hit 100,000 good deeds last week – a whole lot of doing good, a fantastic achievement! Read about it here.
2. The monthly GoodGym social is this Thursday – details TBC by Pritesh but it will be in central London!
3. The monthly GoodGym Long Run for August will be led by the ace Dom Tooze, it will be on the 25th August and will be a 21km route from Hampton Court to Battersea Arts Centre – sign up here.
4. AND...yet again he tried to keep it all ‘hush hush’ and sneak it under the radar, but a massive well done to Johnny who completed his 50th good deed! Next week, coffee and walnut cake to celebrate!

Wheelie good breakfasts!

Following a quick warm-up, with the ever present ‘shooing of the chickens’ stretch and my ill-advised cyclist path presence, there was a name and number count along with everyone’s favourite breakfast foods –– eggs were popular with many, with others went for avocado, pain au chocolat, full English, peanut butter and marmalade on toast and of course the trusty runner essential, a banana!

Drop it like it's squat!

Nicely warmed-up the group set off on the 3km run up to Ashkam Court with my trusty back-marker Jason in place. En-route we had one stop to re-group and get a few bonus squats in, all perfectly executed!

Third time’s a charm!

…that well known saying proved correct as I finally managed to get the group to the task without any unplanned detours and added miles - thank you to Bex for ensuring no ill-advised turns were made and to Sarah for ensuring all the pedestrians weren't completely engulfed by the sea of red!

When we arrived at Ashkam Court we were welcomed by Kumaran, a member of the Resident Club. Kumaran led the group round to the area that needed our attention and gardening skills - there was a whole lot of weeding to be done here! Not wasting any time, the group gardening gloved up and chose their tool/weapon of choice to tackle the task and quickly set about weeding and clearing the beds.

I(vy) don't quite believe my eyes!

As always the group made light work of the weeding, cutting, de-ivying and and in Andrew and Christos' case digging-up of a large big tree root! Catherine literally got stuck-in, Catriona went for the fork jumping approach and Will used his brut-strength to remove a weed (despite the rumours, this photo was in no way staged and the weed was definitely a weed...). With more energy than a plants stored amylose, the team grafted and sweated away as they transformed the bed from its overrun with weeds state.

Within what seemed like no time at all, half an hour had passed, the compost was full to the top and over dozen black bags were filled with garden waste, sadly I forgot to take the all important photo evidence but the amount of garden waste all balanced and neatly piled up was very impressive! The group posed for a post-task group photo, and re-hydrated with the water Kumaran had kindly provided; and not wanting to leave any mess, Will continued to sweep up the path as we began to say our goodbyes and thank yous to Kumaran and the residents. With the promise of sandwiches for our next visit fresh on our minds, we all headed off on the 3km run back to base.

Back at base we all had a cool-down and stretch just as the heavens slowly began to open. Cool-down complete, it was time to seek shelter and head off to the pub for the H&F monthly social for a well-deserved thirst quencher!

Thanks for coming along and for all your hard work at the task, it's absolutely ace leading you guys, many thanks for all your help too. Have a fantastic week and hopefully see you all next week.

Next week’s task is more gardening at Loris Gardens community gardens – sign-up here.