It was a beautiful night in Wandsworth last night, and with a huge 42 runners and a massive job to do we were pumped and ready to do some good!

We had some great new runners join the GG Wandsworth fam, which always gets the evening off to a happy start! Hello and a very big welcome to Rachel, Olivia and Olivia.

Before we set off we had a quick chat about the Endure 24 race that had happened over the last weekend and that a number of GoodGym runners had smashed - if you're inspired why not check out the next race trip to East Farm on the August bank holiday. There are a number of race distances to choose for, so there's something for everybody. All the details are here so why not check it out.

No Pain(t) No gain

Our Monday job was down at the amazing Caius House, a youth centre in Wandsworth. We've been helping to set up a community café, The Grub Club, an organisation that helps provide food and nutrition advice to local disadvantaged young kids. It was a quick mile run away, so we kicked off with a little warm up that featured progressive squats, fast feet and jumps. We also discussed who we would choose to take on a road trip, if we could choose anybody. Looks like David Attenborough is going to be very busy over the next few months, but the Obamas (and Trump!), the new Royal Couple (on separate trips!) and a few of us in the group will also need to pack a bag....

With Andrew back marking we made it down to Caius House in no time at all, stopping for a few toe taps and squats along the way, and found Aisling waiting for us with paint pots, rollers and a list of jobs. We split up into groups to tackle furniture sanding and treating, and lot of different paint jobs around the room. With colour now being added and the final touches really coming together, it is clear that this place is going to look fantastic. If you want to find out more about the sort of amazing things the Grub Club are doing, have a look here. After half an hour we had made some real progress, but there are still some jobs to be done, so we'll be back! If only there were more hours in the day...

We said our goodbyes, and headed over for a local park where we got stuck into our fitness session, which was circuits with a difference. The idea was that we could choose between three different levels of difficulty with each station, while a control group knocked out 40 jumping jacks and a sprint before each group could move on. It was a tough one last night, but you guys worked hard and really nailed it. Way to go, GoodGym!

There was just a short run and a little (!) hill ahead of us before we could call it a night, so in pairs we set off to really attack that last sprint. A few stretches later and we were done. Nice work, team. If you fancy a good upper body workout shifting bags of compost up the stairs to a rooftop community garden next week (and why wouldn't you?) then sign up here for another night of GoodGym fun!

After thunder and lightening very very frightening during the afternoon, we actually managed to have a dry run come evening in Lambeth. As the last Tuesday of the month we had our Shit Prize of the Month to give out. The lucky winner was Andrew, who finally, finally bought some new trainers. This has made trainer Katie very happy as she feels sad when she looks at his sad, sad shoes. WELL DONE ANDREW.

James KB led a small but perfectly formed crack team 3km through Brockwell Park to the South London Botanical Institute. They had to move some seeds and boy were there lots. They moved boxes and boxes of the stuff in a human chain. And they only got about half way through. Don't panic Botanicals, we'll be back!

Katie led the rest of the group back to Clapham Common, where we were all happy about the rain as it softened the ground for our nearly final round of digging. We removed loads of the turf and wheelbarrowed it over to the park edge. It was hard work and sometimes even two people jumping on a spade didn't manage to get beneath the surface. But after a lot of arm muscles and a serious portion of elbow grease, we left happy to have made such a big dent in it.

After running back to base, we did some nice stretches and then went home. Well done Lambeth!

It was another lovely evening and we had more lovely new people. Which is quite amazing and lovely. We congratulated Frances on reaching her 100th run with a party popper. Well done Frances!

After a nice warm up we split into two groups. One group went with Katie directly to Agnes Riley Gardens about 3.5km away up some long straight roads. It was quite warm, phew, but we got there and they were quite surprised by how many we were. Little did they know (until Katie immediately told them) that there was another group of almost the exact same size, led by John, that was on the way, they had just taken a longer route.

There was a range of saws and loppers and people got to work quite literally chopping down some large trees as well as pruning some fairly ferocious shrubbery. Some others took to neatening up the bed edges and even more did some lovely watering. A gang with wheelbarrows and trugs collected woodchip from over there and brought it over here. It was wonderfully organised (yet of course safe) chaos. We smashed the glass ceiling by insisting that they didn't need 'four strong men' to cut down trees and in fact showed them that a wonderfully diverse group of capable people could in fact achieve the same thing.

John took half the group and did some truly tough exercises with them involving some horror of a burpee involving a sit up. And he's relaxed having just come back from his honeymoon imagine if he was having a bad day lads?

With 5 minutes to go we were dragging the aforementioned ferocious shrubbery to a different resting place and the big tree branches had been chopped into smaller ones. The cut grass was taken over to the compost heap and you really would never have known we had been there except for the improved look of the place and the mixture of shock and awe on the faces of the lovely people who run the gardens.

'They came, they saw, they massacred', they said. Which was in fact a good thing.

And with that we ran home again, did some stretches and went our separate ways. EXCELLENT WORK!