At last a Monday evening with sunshine! What a treat to start and finish tonight's group run in daylight

We had a 2.5 mile run to get to the Castle Hill Community Centre. We have visited the centre several times during the winter to carry out painting tasks but this was our first outdoor task there.

We were met in the car park by Garath and directed to a massively overgrown corner full of bushes (which had morphed into a small forest of trees with huge trunks) and ivy everywhere. They needed the area cleared as the overgrowing bushes, were damaging an external wall and to re-landscape the area.

With limited tools available - 2 saws, 1 pair of loppers and a broom - this was going to be tough task. However everyone got stuck in immediately and within minutes a small skip was full to the brim with Clive jumping on the top to flatten it down.

Some real headway was made with some incisive sawing taking out huge swathes of bushes, branches and mangled roots. Tom managed to get swallowed by some of the bushes as he tried to lever out a particularly stubborn trunk / root.

The skip was now rammed and a growing pile of swan branches and chopped weeds and ivy was amassing on the ground.

Eventually we had to call a halt as time ran out but we'd made a massive impact in clearing most of the area.

The return leg of the run incorporated some train sprints and Steve led us home via his shortcut from last week.

This report can't end without reference to Kerry's story of arriving at Goodgym this evening - he ran from home down to the waterfront

While waiting the inevitable hour or two for the lights to change I thought to myself “that’s strange: I can’t see any runners in the building”. Maybe I was later than I thought, and everyone had already set off? No, looking at my watch I could see it was only 29 minutes past …… five. I’d fallen short in my little hand reading skills, and set off an hour early. Nothing for it to loop back home, sit down for half an hour, then run all the way back down again.

Brilliantly funny but also top dedication to run home and back again to meet us an hour later.

Last night in Wandsworth we started the week right with a short and speedy run, an equally short and speedy task, plus a fun fitness session.

Stephanie, William, Alice and Lynn all joined us for their very first GoodGym group run last night with some fantastic running, so give them all a cheer!

We had some great news last night, with a couple of Wandsworth runners smashing the Oxford Half Marathon on Sunday and still making it to the group run - Tom and Matt, well done!

The run was short-ish so we made sure we took our time warming up to run in the cool night air, and heard about all the ways in which everyone takes care of their own mental wellbeing - of course GoodGym and running took the top spots, with wine and baths also scoring highly. Running and exercise are great ways to de-stress and your body will get a rush of endorphins, ensuring you feel good! One runner wrote an article about it all here.

We took a speedy 2.5km run down to Alderbrook Primary School, with David backmarking, to move some furniture from the top of the school down to the bottom. After a quick photo we were shown to the room where all the furniture was stored - it was about 4 flights of stairway up to the top of the school, so we knew we were in for a good leg and arm workout. Everyone got stuck straight in and split up into groups to carry chairs, tables and shelves all the way down to the playground where everything got stored in a small out-building. With so many hands helping out it was all over quickly and we were ready for our run back to BAC.

We stopped on the common for a longer fitness session where we found out who is scared of spiders and who cycles to work amid all the planking, sumo squats and reverse crunches. As we finished the task so quickly we even had time for some quick games of fish and chips and duck duck goose!

Thanks for having me to lead the run Wandsworth. Ana will be back in her rightful place next week when we visit Wendelsworth Community Garden to see our GG Tree.

Tonight took us on a 3.2km each way run to a local independent charity shop to do some weeding and general tidying up around the grounds of it.

A big occasion this week as 5 of our runners were taking part in their 10th GoodGym Norwich group run. So a big shout out to Robert, Samantha, Catherine, Katy and Carl. A fantastic achievement considering we're only on our 15th run!

Catherine had asked me to give everyone a "chocolate finger" when we got back to say thanks.

Bill volunteered to be back runner this week and Simon has the most amazing Head Torch known to man, although it dazed me for about 5 minutes!

Dan Harris has now completed his Leadership in Running Fitness training as well as his GoodGym Run Leader training - I'll explain more in this week's fitness email. To mark this occasion Dan sported an amazing Xmas Light outfit for tonight's run #legend... check out the photos of Rudolph.

On arrival, Hilary gave me a quick overview of what needed doing and everyone got involved straight away as they always do. Simon, Michelle and Catherine took me up on the offer of trimming the bush as it had overgrown.

It was such a thorough task, not a weed left in sight! I'm not sure if Katy standing in the garden waste bin to flatten it would have passed my Risk Assessment haha.

After a group picture we headed back to The Forum with a few fun activities on the way back. The 1st was a wall sit competition to see who could hold it the longest. It got down to Tim and Dan left... with the latter being crowned the champion. The strain on Rob Riley's face will never be forgotten though!

Further along the journey back we stopped for a pairs strength showdown to see who was the strongest. It included a pushing and pulling contest.

Another great turnout and you can sign up to next week's run here.