A spooktacular night was had by all last night for our annual Halloween group run!

As minions, witches, vampires, skeletons and even a racoon gathered at the BAC, our spirits were lifted by Clemency coming along for her very first run - welcome!

We then did some eerie-sistible warm up exercises, including a squat mexican wave and some Frankenstein walks before testing our grey matter with a quiz question about the weight of the heaviest pumpkin ever grown. Annabel and Jordan got closest to the answer, which was a whopping 1226 kgs. Imagine carving that!

We then took to the streets of Wandsworth, capes fluttering behind us, and ran down to Waste Not Want Not, an amazing charity in Clapham Juction which rescues good food that would otherwise be thrown away. There's nothing more terrifying than that, especially during a cost of living crisis.

Our task last night was a lot of skele-fun, although it involved some hard work. The first job was to load up Waste Not Want Not's van, before assembling the very heavy gazebo. There was a bit of working out to do as, at first look, it appeared to be solely for the use of children or some very small tables. Luckily some clever sparks figured it out, and before long boxes and boxes of heirloom carrots were making their way outside ready to be donated to the passers by, along with tomatoes, pears and hot chocolate (the latter of which provided to be more popular than the veg, perhaps unsurprisingly!).

It may have been witchful thinking that we'd get through the whole lot of boxes but as soon as we started with some 'gentle' encouragement to entice the public to play their part in preventing food waste and grab themselves some delicious food and drink, we were away! It may have been Lorna's call to 'save the Clapham carrots', Steph's ghoulishly gorgeous fake blood, the line of professional packers put together tempting bundles, or Ali's beautifully mixed hot chocolate, but before long the wares were being whisked away and the donations were pouring in.

After a super quick clear down where we grabbed ourselves a handful of carrots each (looking forward to the pics of soup, purple carrot cake and other treats!) we headed back to the BAC for some very silly games. Trick or Treat proved to be very high energy with lots of fitness forfeits thrown in for good measure. There was one victorious team, but even at Bad Gym everybody gets a reward. What better way to top off the evening but by heading to the pub?

Next week normal service will be resumed with a trip to Ravenstone school to finish off the leaf mulch. Fangs for all the heard work last night!

What a way to kick off National Volunteering Week, with a massive 42 runners meeting up to sprinkle some good over Wandsworth - covering 6k and a knocking out a core blast in the process!

We had some excellent new faces join us for the first time this week. Please put your hands together and give a massive welcome to Tom, Chris, Gaby, Rhoanna, Chris and Katie! Also lovely to see Catriona from Hammersmith doing a nice bit of GG tourism at her first Wandsworth group run.

Well done to all those amazing people, including Beth, Helen, Jessie, Paul and Luke who turned up for their second run of the day, after going to the Mayor's Run to Do Good at City Hall earlier that day. Nice work!

Also don't forget that we have the monthly GoodGym social on Thursday in Farringdon - your chance to catch up on all the GG news, meet up with other GGers and see who won that all important Pun of the Month. And there's no need to wear your kit!

After all that cheering and news, we headed outside to do our warm up, increasing the level of work incrementally until we were breathing more heavily and our heart rates were up. We had a quick discussion on our fav films - Gladiator, Bridget Jones and even the Lion King all got a mention, before setting off to our task with Helen and Emily kindly backmarking.

Three kilometres later we arrived at the Rose Community Clubroom, a lovely community centre for local residents - and with a beaut view of the power station. It hosts music lessons for local kids, is home to a choir and other groups, and even has an outside pizza oven and barbeque which the neighbours can use. Waiting for us with brooms and cleaning equipment was Glenn, who manages the place, and we soon got into cleaning, weeding, sorting and shifting rubbish and outside furniture. Half an hour later the place was looking great, and we were rewarded with chocolate treats and water. Lucky us! Waving goodbye to Glenn we set off for a short run to the beautiful Battersea Park for our workout.

We started our fitness session with a plank race which engaged our cores to the max, before moving on to some tough but effective conditioning exercises including side planks switches, frog jumps, low squats and wide leg jumps. Then Chi took over for a serious abs blast designed to give us a core of steel. It featured scissor kicks, leg holds and ankle touches and put us all through our paces. Thanks Chi!

With a 3k run still ahead of us we set off back to the BAC, taking on that last hill with some real power. Next week we have got a cracking task finishing off the decorating of a lovely community café in a Wandsworth youth centre - you can sign up for it here. Expect more fun, more fitness and a lovely sense of having done some real good. Well done team!

ICE ICE B-BABY!

Yes, it was a chilly icy one out there on our group run with ice underfoot, so we took it super steady on the run out to Abbeydale Picture House to ensure we all stayed on 2 feet and had no Bambi incidents.

SANTA! I KNOW HIM!

This week Santa joined us as our Xmas back marker, festively lit up to spread Xmas cheer for all around. Great work Santa!

NO, NO, NOTORIOUS

On arrival to the Picture House we were greeted by NOTORIOUS NICK who gave lead us up through the back entrance as private screening was ongoing in the main cinema room with Sheffield based Salt Street productions.

We went all the way to the top for our brief where we were greeted by the Picture House's very own pigeon who was very calm throughout the task and thankfully did not decide to go to the toilet on anyones head during the evening.

Nick gave us the briefs and we split into 3 teams:

1. TEAM Scrub a dub dub (prepare)
2. TEAM PVA glue the walls (seal)
3. TEAM White wall Xmas (paint)

All the teams got straight to the task delivering a 3 pronged attack to prepare, seal and paint the walls to make the rooms usable in the near future.

IT'S FITNESS, IT'S FITNESS TIME!

Once time was up we headed back out into the cold winter air for a big thank you and Merry Xmas from Nick and then headed home toward the Showroom with a stop off at our fave park for some winter warming fitness which this week inc:

• Paired Arm Rows
• Static Sprints
• The Circle of Merkel

To finish off and to ensure we were not slipping on the ice we finished with a squat challenge to the tune of 'FLOWER' by Moby, squating to the commands of 'bring Sally up, bring Sally down' which at around 3mins 30s starts to burn! Everyone got the end and will be the better for it, well done team!

BEANIE BABY

On arrival back at based we stretched of and heard announcements before heading into the warm where a surprise was in store for Kim from Lilli who has skillfully crafted a GG chunky knit beanie!

Check out Lilli's ETSY Shop here

Until after Xmas, have a great break and look forward to seeing you all on the 1st Jan!