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!

A new meeting venue for this week's Hackney run, and despite a few good-gymers not quite getting that memo, we managed to locate everyone in time at our new base of E5 Bakehouse. We had 13 with 2 newbies, and we separated into two groups for our tasks for the evening.

One group headed by Kevin ran to The Dalston Curve Garden, to return to the 15 tonnes of compost we'd started moving last week. The Curve Garden is a social enterprise, available for use by the local community, We debated different compost moving strategies but generally found most strategies fruitless, and just giving it a our best shot was the best it got! The job isn't finished, so no doubt we'll be back soon to try and complete the task!

The second group stayed at E5 Bakehouse, and attended to their compost pile. Who knew that Hackney had so much compost that needs moving?!

The Curve Garden group returned back to London Fields and did some sprint training between trees. To finish up we made sure our legs would feel it in the morning with some jump squats, lunges and more running.

Turns out the lovely folk at E5 left out some bread for us to take home, which was a lovely treat; thanks guys!