This evening, despite the forecast of showers and the onset of Autumnal darkness, 22 runners (& gentle joggers) showed up at wholefoods to do some good. There was a busy news section after #GGSuperSaturday and the acquisition of the 3 Pigeons Plot at the weekend. We welcomed 3 first time runners: Dominic, Antony & Paul, congratulated Katie on her wedding, then welcomed back Sali gave a shout out to Dharmesh on a tourist trip from Redbridge and celebrated my 100th run!

We headed out to the Green for our warm up, where Mark had a new game for us, involving press ups and collecting items of kit from the centre of the circle. Feeling quite pleased with our 1 item & 2 sets of press ups, Paul & I were at a lost to see how other teams had managed 4 items, you guys really are too quick!

Nicely warmed up, we set out on the run. Three intrepid walkers took the bucket & headed off on their 2.5k route whilst the rest of us headed for Holly Lodge, in the middle of Richmond Park. In the dark with no traffic, there was a really peaceful air to the park, which made for a lovely run, chatting away to each other.

At Holly lodge, we found the rest of the pack doing star jumps while they’d waited for us. They’d found some baby frogs (or possibly toads) on the path, so as we headed back, we were ‘eyes down’ making sure we didn’t step on any.

Once at Richmond Green, the walkers had already arrived with their buckets, and were heading off to fetch water from the pub. The Princes Head is rapidly becoming our favourite bucket filling watering hole, for always giving us warm water! (Thank you to both Prices Head and the Cricketer's!)

Our task for this evening was to continue cleaning the railings around Richmond Green for Richmond Council. We’ve been here a couple of times now but with a 22 strong crew tonight, we were keen to see if we could finally make it to the end of the fence. Pressure was on, we had to cover more distance than we’d done before & we had to make sure they got Mark’s stamp of approval. No streaky bollards tonight, we were after nice gleaming white ones! That required two teams, one for cleaning, one for rinsing but clearly we’re pro’s at this now as we raced our way to the end of the railings just in time. Our head torches showed up what brilliant work we’d done!

We made a short jog to the corner of the Green nearest Wholefoods for a quick warm down. And then that was it, another run down, the first for a long time, in the dark.