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Last night, not only did we turn a whole eight years old, our group session pushed us over the 10 000 good deed mark! What an amazing way to celebrate.

And celebrate we did! On the hottest day of the year, a huge 21 of us met to do good and get fit on the anniversary of our very first group run. It seemed right that we should be going to our own GoodGym garden, a space where we've been growing fruit and veg to donate to the kids program at the theatre.

So after a warm up where we did, you guessed it, 8 reps of various exercises, we went round the group and said what we wanted to do when we grew up when we were 8 years old. Answers ranged from footballer, to two dentists and even Xena Warrier princess!

We set off for the garden, and were delighted to find that there were loads of crops ready to be harvested, including potatoes and some delicious looking kale. We also collected loads of the fallen cooking apples, weeded, staked and strung up our runner beans (appropriate for us!).

The produce we grow will be used to donate to the children's sessions at the theatre, which is run as a charity, and to other community food organisations. We are also repurposing what would otherwise be underused land and increasing biodiversity, so it's a win-win-win situation!

Job done we headed over to the common to play some very silly but hopefully fun ball based fitness games. We started off with human hungry hippos, before testing our squat and reflex skills before having a plank off whilst balancing the balls on our backs. There were some interesting tactics on display and luckily we had the VAR courtesy of Paul to go back and watch game play. Shout out to Kevin and Jordan for collecting the most, with Hugo and Suresh in a close second! In the plank off it came down to six of the strongest cores - well done Catherine, Beth, Hugo, Elif, Sophie and Jasmin!

After all that fun and hard work, it was time to head back to the Omnibus bar for some drinks, chats and incredible food. Everybody outdid themselves with the goodies, but it was Catherine's masterpiece of a cake that had us all talking. It was an amazing creation, and what made it more delicious was that is was baked using blackberries forged from Wandsworth common - what could be more GoodGym than that!

We had a wonderful speech from Jordan, who put what GG means to us all into words better than I could hope to here. So to echo him, there are so many memories we've made over the past 8 years. There have been lots of new faces and we love that our group is welcoming and inclusive. We have achieved so much together and made some beautiful friendships. So here's to the next 8 - and beyond.

Apparently 8 years is a bronze wedding anniversary, but I think every single one of you deserves a gold medal!

Next week we'll be back for more doing good and getting active, when we'll be painting playground planters. Hope to see you there!

On the hottest day of the year we were treated to some refreshing water during our warm up thanks to the volunteers at the BAC community garden who hosed us in between watering! It cooled us down but did nothing to dampen our spirits, as we had a lot to be cheerful about during our Monday run.

First of all it was [Catherine] (https://www.goodgym.org/v3/profile/catherine-moore]'s 200th good deed, which is absolutely amazing. Give her cheer for being a fantastic task force member, and for the tonnes of compost she's shifted, the masses of weeds she's pulled, and the huge amount of donations she's sorted over those 200 sessions. Way to go Catherine!

Secondly, we had some new faces to welcome to the group. Give a big clap for Lily, Kirsten and Hugo who all joined us for their first session. Brilliant to have you along, and thank you for all your fantastic efforts with a big job tonight.

In the first year of gender parity between the participants of the Olympics, we took a guess at how many athletes in total were attending before we set off for our run. Ali was bang on as she knew the answer, while Lily took a highly accurate guess. If you're wondering, it's a whopping 10 500 people going for gold this summer!

Inspired by the thought of all that sport, we set off for the Rose Clubroom. We had already started the job two weeks ago, and we were back to do the next stage of painting. It was quite a substantial run with lots of twists and turns, so when we arrived we found that a few GGers had already started work, which was great. Lovely to see Maria and Kymm join us for the first time in Wandsworth!

We got got ready to roll, commenced cutting in, and brushed up on our brush strokes, and before long the place was transforming from drab cream to a colourscape of beautiful blue and crisp white. OK, there may have been as much paint on us as there was on the wall, but the finished product was pretty impressive! Well done everybody. The community centre is a vital lifeline for local people, offering free classes and hot meals, advice, support and community building programs. It's great to help make it as welcoming and bright as possible.

Next week I'm away so Catherine will be leading this community mission to Doddington community roofgarden. Don't forget there is the weekly pub quiz social afterwards!

Let me know if you'd like to be added to our whatsapp group and I'll send you a link. And last but not leat, MOnday 12th is our 8th birthday, so get ready for a fun, birthday themed session and social!