It was flippin' cold as we gathered outside the Oasis on Shrove Tuesday. Inspired by Tracey's GoodGym branded pancakes - with baked in red batter and not strawberry sauce, just in case there are any remaining doubters - we discovered there's a clear preference for the traditional lemon and sugar topping on our pancakes.

But it's Richard's impressive efforts in once eating 27 pancakes that will take some beating...although not all heroes wear capes, this red-shirted hero certainly eats crêpes!

With that, it was time to beat the streets and whisk ourselves away to Age UK at Toothill Community Centre with Charles leading the way and the Dodgy Bum Gang, hamstrung with hamstring and glute niggles, bringing up the rear. Matt was there to greet us at the Community Centre with everything prepped for our painting session.

Last time we visited, we painted the walls with paint of the consistency and colour of scrambled eggs.

After some work at the centre, they've had un oeuf of that, and our task was to paint the walls with what looked like pancake batter but was in fact magnolia paint.

We split into two teams with Helen, Richard and Jason taking on the high rolling activity of painting the upper panels in the large hall and the rest of us tackling the upper hall, including repainting that famous yellow brick wall. The not so mellow yellow paint was soon covered up, but it looks like a second coat will be needed so a return visit is on the cards. Was Matt yolking when he asked if anyone would like to take the eggy paint away with them? We'll never know as there was no one brave enough to take up the offer!

Regular readers will know that we love a hump and dump task in Swindon and tonight we squeezed in a bit of lifting and shifting of an enormous oven with Jake and Mike leading the way in the muscle-flexing crew. After all that exertion, Matt's offer of a drink in the lovely cosy café at the centre was very welcomed. Matt really was the host with the most, offering a variety of coffees, tea, hot chocolate, cold drinks, crisps and biscuits (including our favourites, Jammy Dodgers). Hannah was particularly excited to be offered a choice of regular or red Fanta - we're expecting the full tasting notes to follow! It was then time for the photo shoot - we're still not entirely sure what gestures Richard was making but if the photos are a bit blurry, it's because we were all laughing too much at his slightly unusual interpretation of jazz hands.

The café is such a warm and welcoming place that we reluctantly had to head back out into the chilly wind.

It's a good job that Emma the Trainer had her motivational speech ready - "I really don't want to run back" was the inspiring battle cry!

Fortunately we're made of strong stuff and, under the moonlit sky with Venus shining brightly, we were soon back at the Oasis for more coffee and even more chat. There's a lot about Richard in this report, but he also tells that if we had a telescope, we would also have been able to see Uranus - it seems there's also a lot about bottoms in this report. And on that bum note, it's probably best to finish there!

If your goal is to get even fitter and do even more good in 2020, we have just the Community Mission for you. We'll be at Bridlewood School on Saturday putting up some football goals. The next time that Leap Year Day falls on a Saturday is 2048 - that's a long time to wait, so don't miss out this weekend!

Next week, we are running to a new venue - St Paul's Church and Community Centre - it's a longer run but there's plenty of support and encouragement and as always, the run will be backmarked, and no one will get left behind. We hope to see you there!

This week, we scrabbled together a team of 19 great GoodGym’ers to clean a kitchen and sort some board games!

This week’s achievements:

• Welcome along to Sarah for her first GoodGym Swindon task

• Congratulations to Jo for the unveiling of her shiny new 50 good deeds black t-shirt

• Well done to everyone at GoodGym for completing the January challenge of 8,000 Good Deeds, and 10,0000km in January – 113 deeds and over 1,700 of which were from Swindonian GoodGym’ers!

Before we left the Oasis, this week’s icebreaker was in honour of the late Nicholas Parsons, who presented ‘Just a Minute’ on Radio 4 well into his 90’s. We shared who was the most inspiring older person we had worked or volunteered with.

This was an icebreaker that really provoked some interesting and poignant stories. These were a real mix of fondly remembered family members and friends who worked to a ripe age before sadly passing away, to inspiring tales of people still actively contributing to parkrun, their workplace, or charities into their 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 100’s!

Inspired by these tales, we were soon off running and chatting, although maybe not through 'Manningtree' (Mannington Rec) marshes as per Rector Run Leader Richard’s original route!

We arrived at Toothill Farmhouse, and split into two groups. But this was no trivial pursuit – team 1 sorted a heap of board games, while team 2 gave the kitchen a winter spring clean.

Need a cluedo of who did what?! Was it Mr White in the kitchen with the fairy liquid… or did he have a monopoly on mug cleaning?

We soon had the kitchen spic and span, and the games shifted and sorted, not to mention our hot drinks quaffed, and biccies bitten.

Back at the Oasis, we shared what’s coming soon!

Next week’s Group Run we’re painting and DIY’ing for Men in Sheds @ Chippenham Close Community Centre. Sign up here!

We’re also on the lookout for Run Report Writers. We have a small team, and we could do with two or three more to help out. Is this something YOU could help with? It doesn't take up much of your time and can be as short or as long as you like! You also don't need be an English Literature Expert to write our reports; anything goes at GoodGym. Please come forward and help out!

Also, how about an Easter Social. What should we do, where should we go? Any ideas – get in touch in the comments!

With 44 runners ready to run to an amazing community café, we kicked off the week good and proper last night.

We had some great parkrunning over the weekend from the Wandsworth troops - don't forget to wear your tshirt if you're heading to a parkrun this weekend, and you'll be almost guaranteed to find another GG buddy there!

Nicola, Flora, Chris, Matt, Olivia and Martynas all came for their very first GoodGym group run and for that they deserve a massive cheer. Well done!

Before our run down to Caius House, an amazing community youth centre, we had a warm up outside the rapidly refurbishing BAC. After getting our heart rates up, we asked everybody to tell the group one nice thing they planned to do this week. From treating friends to meals, to ringing elderly relatives, to making a cup of tea for flatmates and baking cakes, you lovely lot have a week full of kindness ahead of you.

With a shortish run we set off down the hill, and it really is heartwarming to see the general public's reactions to the sight of almost 50 runners streaming through the streets of Wandsworth on their way to do good. We soon arrived and met Aisling from the Grub Club waiting for us with a list of jobs.

There were lots of painting jobs to do, so we split into teams to tackle furniture, walls and those lovely murals, while one massive group set about giving the kitchen a huge clean ready for the café's upcoming inspection ahead of the big opening. The Grub Club will run free after-school cooking courses for disadvantaged families who wish to improve their cooking skills, confidence and knowledge, and we've been helping them set up this brilliant initiative for a little while now. With the opening in sight, Aisling has promised us an invitation, so watch this space!

With all the jobs done, we enjoyed the watermelon and cola bottles that the Grub Club had laid out as a reward, and headed off for a nearby park for a quick fitness session. Dividing up into small groups we took it in turns doing sprints and thinking up fiendish exercises for the rest of the group to do. After that we nailed a little abs blast featuring a variety of planks, before heading back up that hill to the BAC.

Great job everybody! Next week we have a massive community garden to help out - sign up here.

The past two years have flown by in a blur of gardening, painting, human chains, cleaning, sanding and many, many squats. Last night we celebrated our second birthday in Wandsworth!

In this time we have done a colossal

3707 good deeds

184 jobs for older people

62 runs to our coaches

37 413 kms run in the process

That is pretty inspiring stuff!

It was a first group run for a some lovely people. Put your hands together and give a huge cheer for Alice, Emily, Alex, Isabelle, Rebecca, and Emma!

A huge shout out to Anil who reached a very special milestone last night, having clocked up a massive 50 deeds. Next time you see him in his black 50 tshirt, give him a high five for all the good he's done! A special mention should be given to Matthew who has not missed one single Wandsworth group run since we very first began. Way to go!

It was also lovely to have some great GG tourism from Lewisham, Hounslow, Westminster, Haringey and Lambeth - great to see you all!

Our task last night was a very well timed one given the ongoing heat. We had been asked by Leonard Cheshire, a fantastic organisation in Battersea that supports disabled people, to come and wash their fleet of mobility buses. So after a nice steady mile run down, we arrived to find buckets and sponges and a list of jobs to do.

While half the group got started getting those buses squeaky clean, and themselves a little dirtier, two other sets of runners got stuck into sorting out the garden and washing windows respectively. Forty minutes later, the place was looking much tidier, and we could see our hot and sweaty faces in the shining buses! Setting off for the park we were even 'treated' to a surprise watery ambush by Chi and Andrew from behind the fence. Naughty!

After a little jog over to the park, we eschewed the usual fitness session for a series of party games that still managed to get our hearts pounding. There was some excellent action from the ladies in the biggest British Bulldog game of all time, so amazing super strong Planking lions, and a semi successful game of Blob Tag.

All that was left was a run back to base, a good stretch and then to head over to the common to celebrate our birthday with a special Wandsworth picnic. There were laughs, there was cake, there were party poppers and hats!

Here's to you, GoodGym Wandsworth, for making our borough proud and putting so much into doing good. Happy birthday!

ps our special birthday video will be making an appearance on twitter and facebook, so keep an eye out for it!

The beautiful days seem endless at the moment, adding an extra sprinkling of GG magic to our runs...

Last night we were happy to see a number of lovely new faces joining us for the first time. Give a massive cheer for Ciara, Alison, Debra, Lizzie and Emily, who cam on their first group run!

I mentioned the exciting news last week, but Gardeners' World want to film GoodGym doing their thing, and have chosen one of our favourite tasks in Wandsworth. On 1st August they will be coming to the Doddington & Rollo community roof garden, and it would be great to have as many of you there in your red GoodGym tshirts as possible! The task will be watering, weeding, shifting compost and planting, and it would be amazing to have a big Wandsworth GG crew down there to represent us on the BBC. Sign up here!

We had something very special to celebrate last night, as not one but two of our lovely GG Wandsworth team had both reached that 50 good deed milestone. Absolutely cracking work Emily and Helen, you total stars. These two have committed themselves to do good for their community, I'm pretty sure they deserve a massive cheer!

It was a two task night yesterday, so there was plenty of fun to choose from. En masse we ran over to Harding House, a residential home for deaf people. Our job there was to dig over flower beds and tidy up the garden so that the users there can enjoy the outside space during the lovely weather. So while a large group got digging, a smaller team ran further down to Bramford Community Garden to give their desperate plants a really good watering. The council had recently planted a whole load of new trees there after the community garden had campaigned for them, but the recent spell of hot weather is causing them to struggle. So with water being provided by a local Homebase and the Golden Arches across the road, we got busy ferrying canisters over to the thirsty plants.

Half an hour later we met up with the rest of the group, who by now were having a plank-off in the common, and got stuck into a game of Men V Women stuck in the mud. If you were 'got' you had to do jumping jacks until someone on your team high fived you. The first round, where the women were 'it', was over in record time in a barnstorming victory for the ladies. Was it the slightly uneven numbers, was it the speedy running? Who knows, but it was a lot of fun. We then did some plank variations, holding different plank positions for 30 seconds at a time before moving on to the next one. It's a great core workout, and as we all know, a strong core is vital for good running form.

After a hot and sweaty run back (plus hill!) we stretched it out, and moved on to the bar to celebrate Emily and Helen's excellent achievement. Next week we're running to a local primary school. Sign up here to lend a hand.