With the turbulent weather throughout the day, the GoodGym players who had signed up for tonight's group run kept their poker faces until 18:45. The showdown then revealed the impossible: Four Aces... Four Aces of Spades: Chris, Sevan, Kash and Steph! What kind of card deck can do that? Only GoodGym Ealing deck.

The run through Ealing and Northfields took the three of the Aces to Elthorne Park where they encountered a rabbit. Hungry for pictures of cute animals for the run report, the Aces followed the rabbit down a rabbit hole, which sent them to Wonderland. The Aces were captured by guards resembling playing cards and taken to the court of the Queen of Hearts, the ruler of Wonderland. The Queen thought it would be entertaining to behead the newcomers but Aces gave her a better idea - they could behead the burdock growing by the footpaths in Wonderland! All they needed was... Spades!

The Queen agreed to the deal as she despised the sight of the burrs on the fur of the fluffy rabbits occupying her kingdom. The three Aces discovered that the fourth Ace was kept prisoner in Wonderland too, so they asked the Queen of Hearts to allow him to join their party. The burdock bash ensued! The Aces worked hard, not only decapitating burdock but also digging out the roots as much as they could in the rocky soil. After an hour of labour, the narrow paths of Wonderland have been freed of burdock.

Unfortunately, the Queen of Hearts didn't keep her promise and ordered the execution of the Aces again - not because she was not happy with their job (that was excellent!) - she just thought it would be fun. The Aces dropped their spades and ran for their lives. They caught sight of a rabbit again. The creature, grateful for the decimation of the burdock in Wonderland, led them to a rabbit hole which took the Aces back to the safety of Elthorne Park. Having escaped decapitation and the rain, the Aces of Spades jogged to the nearest chai shop for a Mad Tea Party.

Next week the Aces are heading to Acton to make bunting for the maddest community parties you can imagine! Will you join them? Sign up here!

Tonight's run from Ealing Broadway to Elthorne Park was led by the Fitness Leader in training, Steph Ducat! 🙌 The new GoodGym role allows TaskForce to undergo training to lead running, walking and cycling in a group. Seeing today's weather, we thought it should include swimming too. The evening was particularly damp, with nonstop rain. That didn't stop Christos, Sevan and Kash from joining Steph on the run!

On the way to the task, Steph warned us about the attacks from the ground (cars), water (puddles) and air (umbrellas). When we arrived at the park, Kash cracked the hurdle of opening the tool container. Armed with wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, and reference photos from the ranger, we located the woodchip piles that needed levelling out and migrating further from the path.

We started with the most obvious job: flattening the smaller woodchip heaps. We spread the woodchip, creating a sort of carpet over the nettles. Later, we wheelbarrowed the rest of the woodchip towards the edge of "the carpet", creating a woodchip highway. In the darkness and rain the result seemed pretty decent. We didn't have time to tackle the last pile, so we packed the tools and ran back towards Ealing.

Next week has more wheelbarrow work for us: helping the community of Blondin Allotments distribute compost. Sign up now. Hopefully, the rain will stop by then and the evenings will get lighter after the time change 🤞

A gang of Bodacious Burdock Bashers met today in Hanwell, a new, trending location for young* thrill seekers. They were blessed by the unexpectedly warm weather and an abundance of burdock in a nearby park. For a bunch of cool kids like Madhan, Sevan, Steph Ducat, Harvey and Kash, there's nothing better than hanging out in a park after dusk and bashing some dried burdock.

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*under 60

They ran from the Hanwell Clock Tower to Elthorne Park through the woods by River Brent and along the towpath. No one fell into the canal but it was still fun. In the park, they opened the container where Ranger Jon held his treasures and found a wheelbarrow. It was one of the models that never got a flat tyre, and the crowd instantly fell in love with it. Only Divya, who just arrived on his bike, had a ride that could compete with the barrow. The gang loaded the barrow with loppers and headed uphill to engage with some burdock spotting.

They couldn't find any burdock in the area GoodGymers had cleared at the beginning of August. They must have done a great job back then! Or it was too dark already to spot burdock...

They fired up the head torches and portable lights and moved further down the path. They found giant burdock plants that hadn't been cut down by anyone since GoodGym's last visit. The gang ruthlessly chopped the burdock into small pieces to fit it into tonne bags they had found in the container. The stems made squeaky noises when cracking. A series of kicks and stomps put the protesting burdock in its place. Soon, two big bags were full of burdock and hauled to the container.

The GoodGymers checked if there were no remaining naughty plants in the nearest area but all of the burdock was on their gloves, shoes and running kit. It turned out that the people with the most exposed skin tonight were at an advantage. Paradoxically, they were less attractive to burs that had nothing fluffy to hold on to. No one escaped the itchiness of the skin - a farewell gift from nature's velcro, which god knows how got under GoodGymers' t-shirts.

Next week Ealing GoodGymers are running back to civilisation - to help St Mary's church in the heart of South Ealing. Sign up now!

To continue our time-related adventures in Hanwell, we met at the Hanwell Clock Tower at 18:45. It was our first take on a different group run location. Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash ran to the starting point and were all pumped up to start their run to Elthorne Park... then Madhan appeared out of nowhere! It was a surprise as no one saw when he covertly signed up. Madhan chose to walk to the task while the rest opted for a run. They were all pumped up to start their run to Elthorne Park... but they had to wait for quite a while to cross the busy road.

The running group chose the scenic route: they headed West and crossed River Brent, then ran on its bank South until they reached the canal. The way along the canal led them to Elthorne Park where the runners finished with a short loop around the park. While the guys waited for the guest from Hammersmith, Divya, to arrive on his bike, Kash went to use a secret magical phrase to open the tool container. Inside she found treasures: wheelbarrows, loppers, gloves, tonne bags and, most importantly, brand-new long spades. The latter was promised by Jon the Ranger who asked GoodGymers to dig the burdock which, not tackled recently, was spreading into the entire park.

Five GoodGymers versus whole fields of burdock? We had to choose a spot where we can work together and make a difference. We looked at the map of burdock-heavy areas sent to us by Jon and picked the area between two enclosures at the top of the hill. The path was slowly but steadily becoming overgrown by burdock, brambles, nettles and other plants with unwelcoming features.

Many of the burdock plants were already taller than us, so it wouldn't be too inappropriate to yell "timber!" when chopping them close to the ground. We cut the largest plants into smaller pieces to fit them into the tonne bags, then dug out the roots. As much as we enjoyed sweet and juicy blackberries, we had to cut the brambles back as they didn't stick to the boundaries of the enclosure. While hacking the burdock, we were approached by a friendly dog and worried a little bit that he is going to be soon covered in burs. Luckily, neither the pup nor we caught any Velcro-like passengers before heading out of the park.

We collected two huge bags of burdock and hauled them back to the container. The rest of the unwanted plants, as the proverb says, we threw over the fence - with Jon's blessing, of course.

Next week we are back to our regular starting location, Bodyline, from where we will venture to a task in Acton.

Tonight's group run in Elthorne Park was optimistically promoted as "not only burdock". 8 Goodgymers arrived at the tool container to learn of their evening challenge. The first was making sense of the aerial map they'd been provided with yellow and red areas. These identified 2 areas for tasks with a choice of either:

• Digging out burdock; or
• Removing last year's plants

With most of the group - understandably - hating burdock after previous tasks, they chose the more vague task to clear up the dead plants instead. Only Sevan and Madhan were brave or foolish enough to go burdock bashing. Before the burdock group set off, Kash asked if anyone knew what burdock looked like. Sevan confidently raised his hand, having been here a few times before.

As the burdock team headed down the Red Path on their task map, Team Dead Plant tried to find the old plants without any luck. Meanwhile Sevan and Madhan were doing some sleuthing of the own and playing "spot the burdock" without much success. Eventually they whipped out their phones and called the great book of knowledge in the sky, which confirmed that one of the plants they saw was a variety of burdock. Greater Common Burdock to be exact. Once they'd figured this, Madhan and Sevan got their spades out and started filling their tonne bags with the stuff.

Soon, Kash and Nishy defected to Team Burdock, bringing their shovels with them. Kash was surprised to find out about this new kind of burdock too, so Madhan had to assure her that Google knew better than them. Kash took one of the dead stalks back to Team Dead Plant where they had the same discussion. "That's not burdock!", "no really, it is".

Once Team Dead Plant were convinced about the burdock, Claire, Emily, Mike and Chris saw that they were surrounded by the stuff and it was more easily accessible than where Team Burdock were working. The two teams combined forces, grabbed some more shovels and filled 2 tonne bags by the end of the task.

After last week's Valentine's task, this Tuesday Elthorne Park hosted Mardi Gras for GoodGym Ealing. Were the 9 GoodGymers spending the night devouring pancakes? Definitely not - at least not yet!

We met at the top of Trumpers Way and welcomed a new GoodGymer Nishy who knew that a wheelbarrow workout would work better tonight than the zumba class! We strolled down to the entrance of Elthorne Park where new our task awaited: mulching the hedge at the top of the hill. Chris started the music, headtorches went into flashing mode and the rave was on!

We broke into the container and secured all three wheelbarrows, all the shovels and a couple of rakes. On our first reconnaissance walk in search for the hedge in need of mulching, we discovered that the path to the destination leads uphill, is populated by rabbits and filled with traps! We dealt with barbed wire, took down a few brambles and entered Hanwell's Area 52 where we found the highly secured hedge and collected several beer bottles. We sent those for further investigation by throwing them in the secret postbox masked as a waste bin.

The woodchip pile where Jenni and Chris loaded the barrows was at the bottom of the hilly area, so Madhan and Kash had a good workout pushing their full wheelbarrows up - they even had a little race on their last run uphill! At the top, Ben and Sevan were in charge of distributing the mulch at the base of the hedge. Because there were three wheelbarrows, the third one was getting very popular and made friends with more than one human. Mike and Milly used it, swapping their jobs between filling the barrow with woodchip and pushing the load up. Nishy had several rides with the wheelbarrow up and down before permanently joining the mulching team up the hill.

In less than an hour the tools were returned and the base of the hedge was embellished with fresh woodchip that will help the young trees retain moisture and fight off weeds. After two weeks in a row in nature at Elthorne Park, next Tuesday we will be running to urban areas of Acton and spreading the word about Reduce and Recycle Hub. Sign up for the next group run here.