Amazing! 9 runners ran 6.5km, cleaned the heck out of some garden furniture AND did burpee/mountain climber TABATA! And now an awesome run report from the awesome Kerry!

Last night's run started at Bodyline Fitness Studios, with a great crew of 9. We gently jogged to Haven Green across the road for some bright and cheery warm ups to get us ready for the 3km run to Impact Theatre in Perivale.

We ran over what felt like many hills, but of course what goes up must come down! The classic running mantra! And the steady pace saw us all there in one piece so we got straight into cleaning some furniture in the back garden of the theatre. Mel was on it with the hose and everyone else scrubbed and tidied and it was looking shiny and nice. The theatre is a lovely facility for adults with disability to learn through theatre performance and creation.

Many hands make light work and we were finished quickly. Onto a quick HIIT session of burpees and mountain climbers before heading back to base in Ealing. TABATA training is a great way to do high intensity exercise in a short period of time and exercises like burpees and mountain climbers with strengthen your whole body and help your running too!

After a tough but satisfying journey back, we did some lovely stretches.

Great run team, looking forward to next week!

Last night had more going on then an episode of Eastenders… we had 34 runners, three tasks, one mile time trials, killer circuits, cake, a black t-shirt for50 good deeds, a marriage proposal and even two old school friends reunited by pure coincidence at GoodGym Lambeth….

Whilst 16 runners stayed at Papa’s to help paint the fence of our wonderful meeting point they were not let off lightly with the running… each were sent out to run a mile (well just over) as fast as they could… a great effort was put in… there’s nothing I like more than seeing people come back looking absolutely spent.. and some very speedy times too. They were then rewarded for their hard work of painting and running with 10 minutes of brutal circuits afterwards… I just keep giving.

Here’s what went on at the other two tasks;

Brixton Youth Centre - Beth

We had two tasks to do at Brixton Youth Centre this week - one was the usual, brush and bag up the leaves to make the place look a bit more tidy and the other was to move all the stuff out of a garage, give it a sweep and put it all back a bit more neatly. It turned out this was the perfect task for new runner Kevin who’d actually bothered to read the bit on the website where it says you might want to bring a head torch. You’d be forgiven for thinking there might not be much need for it in June, but when Sarah shouted from inside the garage 'is there a light in here we can use?' Kevin became the hero with the flick of a head torch switch! With tasks completed we set off back to Papa's for circuits, painting and cake. Congratulations on reaching 50 Benson!

Holland Park Estate – Emma

A small group of us ran a little further down the road from Brixton Youth Centre to help Ameena with the Holland Park Estate gardens. After admiring the meadow that is now where we dug up all those weeds a few months ago, we were split into groups do some small weeding tasks (damn you, bindweed, we knock you back and you spring right back up again!). Once the bindweed had taken a good beating we moved onto some new tasks, weeding and digging areas on the edge of the main estate, near the road. Soil was turned, weeds were weeded, loads of really tall rapeseed was pulled up and some of us even managed to fit in planting new plants! Satisfied that we had done some good, we ran back in time for a spot of painting and cake made by Beth and Sarah. Delicious!

Meanwhile in deep deep deep East London we were joined by Citi bank volunteers, regulars and lots of newbies in a bid finish move a giant pile of compost for The Dalston Curve Garden.

Third time is the charm (we hoped) as Good Gym Hackney dutifully returned to tackle the enormous compost pile obstructing the back entrance to Dalston’s Eastern Curve Garden. Our host welcomed us gladly and, for the benefit of our new runners this week talked us through a brief introduction to how the community garden is run and some of the good that it aims to do for the local community and particularly the schools.

Thanks to a rather healthy turn out of 20 eager do-gooders this week we split into two teams as the space at the back there is only big enough for a handful of diggers without them chuckling the compost all over each other. A-team cracked on the shovelling and barrowing while B-team reluctantly gathered in the clearing at the back of the garden for ‘beasting’. 8 minutes of 'leg blaster’ (three rounds of squats, lunges, jump-squats, jump-lunges) rotating back onto digging and returning later for some core work (three rounds of burpees, knee charges and press ups).

Our host served up some well needed refreshments before we split once again into two groups with one group taking a slightly longer scenic route back along the canal. The short route team certainly didn’t get off lightly however, getting stuck into two rounds of plank relay around the half-km cricket pitch circumference.

Yogic stretches and sighs of relief brought the session to a close. Thanks to all the newbies for coming along this week, we’ll look forward to seeing you again soon.