Nevermind the wild weather of the afternoon, a group of hardy GoodGymers met up to tackle a big leaf problem at a local park last night - and despite frosty fingers and dark conditions managed a whopping total number of bags!

Great to see us all meeting up to run down together to Christchurch Gardens - there's no better way to stay warm! Before we set off we did our usual warm up and this week's question involved predicting how many bags of leaves we would collect over the course of the evening. The guesses ranged from 7 and 40, but that was without having yet seen the scale of the issue...

A mile of wet and windy running later we arrived to meet Nigel who provided us with some excellent leaf scoops, rakes and no fewer than four rolls of bags. While Abby and Steph started work on the front area, which was very clogged with wet leaves, the rest of us disappeared to the back of the church where we found even more thanks to several massive trees. Knee deep in fallen leaves, everybody rolled up their sleeves and started on the job. The leaves have proved to be a bit of an issue because not only do they stop the bulbs coming through and the grass growing underneath, they're slippery and creating drainage problems in the car park. So the small group of Friends of Christchurch Garden welcome our help sorting it out.

Half an hour later the group had made a big difference - not an easy job so well done team! As a reward (!) we opted to do a short leg blast, which featured wall sits, lunges, progressive squats and those NFL fast feet.

I can also reveal that it was Jordan who won this week's challenge to predict how many bags we'd collect - the total was a massive 36 bags full of leaves!

Great work everybody. Next week we're going to Paradise Cooperative Garden to help shovel some horse manure. Perhaps not one for your finest footwear but definitely one that will benefit the local community. Hope to see you there!

We have loads of fun stuff coming up over the run up to Christmas, including a festive social, so keep an eye on the website and socials. Have a great week, GoodGym.

Despite it absolutely pelting it down just as we started our group run last night, the wet conditions did not dampen our spirits! Perhaps it was because we had lots of new faces to welcome to their very first session - put your hands together for Alice, Abigail, Stuart, Jamal and Abby!

After a bit of a drenching on the way down to Balham, we arrived to find some of the group meeting us there had already started on the various jobs for the evening. So while Jamal and Abby had made a good inroads smashing up an old shed (good for releasing stress on a Monday), Richard from Transition Town welcomed the rest of the group. He explained that a group they wanted to create a beautiful learning space for the children, but given the size of the project they needed as much help as possible.

So while a few of us joined the wrecking crew, another group went out to the back of the school to carry on emptying the leaf pens so the lovely rich mulch could be used to grow plants in the raised beds. Meanwhile the third lot of GGers tackled some serious tonne bags of soil, doing an excellent job on mixing it all in.

After three quarters of an hour of hard work, it was great to see how much we could get done together. Hope you've all dried off!

Next week we're off for hopefully a bit of a drier task painting a room at Sound Minds. There are also two missions going on through the week - our regular Friday lunchtime mission to help serve lunch to homeless people and one to deliver hot meals to vulnerable families in the area on Sunday. Have a happy week, Goodgym!