Undeterred by the earlier torrential rain, 16 runners made it out for Monday night’s task, including two intrepid newbies, Sundara and Olive (welcome to you both) and our very own Nandos ninja, Victoria, clocking up her 50th good deed on the night.  

Mark had us dancing in circles around his man-bag in the square outside Wholefoods to warm up, finishing with a round of the can-can which, while not entirely worthy of the Moulin Rouge, was certainly lifting the spirits on January’s famous ‘Blue Monday’.

Then we were off up a long hill to Silver Birches care home in Richmond.  The beauty of the long up hill is, of course, the sweet downhill afterwards.  And on this occasion, some of the team were treated to an impromptu demonstration of ‘free-wheeling’ downhill, something most of us assumed would have necessarily involved a bike and no brakes.  But we learn something new every day and this Monday eve had us back to school with Mark dropping PT top tips at every opportunity.

It was good to be back at this great organisation that do such wonderful work in our community and we were there to sweep and tidy the garden and car park.  For some this meant being locked in mortal combat with legions of snails and super long super worms, who were no doubt none too pleased about the disturbance to their habitat.

16 pairs of hands made light work of clearing up the driveway, garden and car park.  We rounded off the evening with a surprisingly tuneful performance of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, distracting us from the muscle burn we were enduring from one of Mark’s strength building exercises.  We can only imagine what the residents thought about it…  Then it was back downhill to Wholefoods for a good, long stretch.

Newsflash: we are now in the middle of the GoodGym January challenge.  Our Richmond team is currently approximately a third of the way towards our goal for good deeds and mileage.  At the time of writing, we have completed 31 out of our target 120 good deeds and 286 out of our target 840 kms.  We have until the end of January to take these targets prisoner, so step it up, people: make sure you’re giving your trainers a good workout this month and remember to link your Strava or Runkeeper account to your GoodGym profile so all of your runs count towards our collective total.  

Happy running

Is anyone else still singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star??"