200 flyers, 7 keeno runners, 6k and a whole load of guilty pleasures made up another cracking night in Hounslow!

We kicked off the evening with a few bits of news, including plans for our long run on the 3rd December and cheering Remy to half marathon glory on the 2nd December. Not forgetting of course that next week is our very FIRST birthday and we shall be celebrating with a great task (putting up flatpack furniture), a birthday-themed fitness game, and a pub quiz that we are going to smash. There will almost certainly be cake.

We then took ourselves outside for a warm up and to find out everybody's guilty pleasures. Although we should never feel guilty about pleasure, of course. TV shows (trashy and decidedly not trashy) featured quite highly in between high knees and heel kicks, including Outlander, Gilmore Girls, Made in Chelsea and Love Island. To which the latter particularly Ella had showed an impressive commitment. Sunflower seeds and bad action films we agreed were more noble pursuits.

We had a speedy run down to Waterman's Art Centre - a great independent charity that aims to inspire people of all backgrounds through creativity and provide art for all. Almost 2.5 k later and we arrived at the reception desk to find a pile of 200 flyers for an upcoming Digital Weekender waiting for us to distribute. This event in a couple of weeks is crammed full of fun and fascinating free sessions, so do check it out.

Now, we had done this before for Waterman's with mixed success, but this time we were going to do it better. We had already mapped out an area that we were going to hit up, so quickly made our way there. Splitting up into two groups to cover both sides of the street, we got ourselves into formation to put a flyer through every letterbox. Soon we were operating like (a bit rusty) clockwork. We covered about 2k in this way, encountering some menacing barking and some beautiful houses, and soon found ourselves empty handed and back at Turnham Green for our fitness session.

This week were CODE CRACKING. Yes, it was complicated, and no, it probably wasn't explained very well. The idea was that two teams had to each crack a 6 number code. Each number related to a certain exercise and could appear more than once. Each team had to guess the correct sequence but to find out whether they had, they had to do each exercise. A square bracket meant it was the right number in the right position. Phew. I said it was complicated. Still, it was no match for Ella, Andreea and Natasha, who just in the nick of time managed to crack that code and were declared the winners. I mean, there wasn't an actual prize. But they won an overall sense of satisfaction, and that is priceless.

After a few stretches and a cool down we revelled in our post-run, post-goodness endorphin high and called it a night. Great work team. Bring on next week!

Last night eight runners braved the rain to help out at a local foodbank, got completely soaked, and still ended the night with a smile on their faces. What a team.

It started at the Town Hall with a little light drizzle and a lot of good news. Well done to Dave and Andy who both did great times at the Gunnersbury parkrun this weekend, to Remy, who gritted her teeth and beat the grueling Winshester half marathon, to Natasha who smashed a 5k race, and to Will, who joined us after an intense 10k the night before. What a week of running.

With a short warm up and a quick discussion about our favourite chocolate bars - which ranged from healthy dark chocolate and lime to good old Lion bars - we set off on the 3k run to Ealing Road Baptist Church. Shout out to Jennifer who had a great run down there, and to Michelle for battling jetlag womanfully! We also saw some excellent fartlek from Andy, Will and Remy.

Roger, the Pastor, was waiting for us with water and jobs as we soggily trooped into the building. A quick shake off and we were ready to get stuck in. It started with stacking books and chairs, which we completed in no time at all, before we moved onto the foodbank which Roger runs for local communities in need. With Will and Adam skillfully dismantling a stack of shelves the rest of us formed a (somewhat chaotic at points) human chain to empty and pack up the food. It turned out to be a lot of fun as well as a good upper body work out. Even if we did have to have several attempts at taking the video. " You actually have to move" said Natasha.

By the time the jobs were done the rain was coming even more steadily, which gave us a nice opportunity to 'cool down'. We're fighting a embittered battle to 'Beat the Streets' in Hounslow at the moment, and each have a card which we tap against a whole load of stations across the borough to record how far we've covered. So, despite the rain, off we went looking for meters, happily tapping and squatting our way round and noting all the good pubs that we weren't stopping at.

Before long we had made it back to our starting point, and with a few stretches we finished the night, already anticipating hot cups of Yorkshire tea, warm dressing gowns, even warmer showers and cold prosecco. Next week, it'll be warm and dry as we tackle the fly posters and graffiti under Turnham Bridge, so go on, sign up here.

Don't forget the social next Thursday at the fabulously named Blacksmith and Toffeemaker in Angel, where we will represent Hounslow at the monthly international pun of the month competition!

We had a Hounslow first to kick off the night yesterday evening - a massive congratulations to [Andy] who is the first of the group to reach that 50 good deed milestone! Give him a huge cheer for this achievement. To celebrate there was cake, lots and lots of cake. We were also treated to a fabulous honey cake made by Remy (who had also run a barnstorming half marathon at the weekend) to mark Rosh Hashanah. Shana Tova everyone!

We were also given our cards by Dave for our team to take part in Hounslow's Beat the Street, welcomed lovely GG ers Alex from Ealing, and Helen and Jordan from Wandsworth, and were very happy to have Jennifer back in the group.

We will rock you

With our task waiting for us just across the road, we had a quick topical chat about our favourite celebrations - Christmas, Passover, St Patrick's day, Norwegian national day and, erm, pancake day all topped the list - and then hopped over to Turnham Green to find Jan waiting for us with tools, bulbs, plants and gloves ready to get stuck in.

Apparently we have had lots of compliments about our previous job on the green where we cleared a huge meadow of thistles, so it was great to move onto the next stage of the job. With Alex and Jennifer tackling the central area planting some beautiful pots, two other teams spread out over the different areas to get to grips with the weeds. The light was fading quickly, but with some headtorches and sheer grit we cleared the rockeries and planted packs of tulip bulbs which we will admire next spring as we do our sprints.

Tulips, two legs

Job done, we moved on to our fitness session, kicking off with some Indian file round the park to get our heart rates up. We then had a quick game of 'grab the light' (the name needs some work) before moving on to the real session, which was a tough one. We concentrated on three areas - core, glutes and arms. Starting with glutes we did six exercises for 45 seconds, including lunges, squats, power skips and hip thrusts before moving onto abs. For that we used the benches to smash out planks, holds, plank jumps and side planks as well as, of course, dead bugs. Finally we tackled those difficult upper body drills with press ups, tricep dips and even an arm wrestle.

After all that, all that was left was to do a good stretching session and to eat cake. Ever run should end with some. Sign up for next week's run, where we will put those beat the street cards to good use.

A huge task, a monster fitness session, and cheese jokes. What more could you ask for from a Wednesday night?

With a lovely turn out of excellent Hounslow regulars and some GG tourism from Wandsworth (hello Jordan, Matthew and David!) it was set to be a great night as we said our hellos and well dones. Please give Andy, a cheer, for he has nailed no less than eight good deeds this month - way to go! Great job Jo, Adam and Dave who all took on Gunnersbury parkrun last Saturday and produced some great runs. Finally a massive congratulations to Andreea who rejoins us after getting married!

We had a bit of an upside down night, as our task was just opposite our start location on Turnham Green. So after our news and a quick round of 'what's your favourite cheese?' (halloumi coming in at number one) we met up with Jan (favourite cheese - pyrenean mountain) who provided us with gloves and tools and headed straight over to the task before our run. This was not before we were treated to several of the cheesiest jokes we could hope for from Adam. Let the record reflect the best of them:

Did you hear about the explosion at the cheese factory in France? All that was left was de-brie. How do you approach a Welsh cheese? Caerphilly. What did the cheese say when he looked in the mirror? Halloumi.

Lovely stuff.

Off we went with Jan, who showed us a huge wild meadow section of the green which had a rather intrusive thistle problem. After demonstrating what exactly was a thistle, we donned some pretty hardcore rigging gloves and got stuck in. There was some unfortunate thistle throwing incidents, a blanket refusal to film a video which showcased our work, and a few scratchy-bitey things, but after half an hour, the area looked much better. It's great to be able to help out in an area which we use so often for our fitness sessions, and which is enjoyed by so many local people. We'll be back next week to finish off the job.

Next was our tough fitness session. After a dynamic warm up, we kicked off with a very speedy Indian file fun around the green (and a bit of playing chicken with the traffic) before launching into our monster circuits session which featured no less than 15 stations. It sounds like a lot (it was) but each cardio-based exercise was interspersed with a strengthening drill. After toughies such as sprints, squat jumps, reverse crunches and mountain climbers, we finished off with the killer plank twists. Fantastic work, team. All that was left was a quick game of Bulldog which saw the super speedy Natasha claim the title - and not for the first time! She's the one to watch.

Don't forget that next week we have a curry social next week - everybody welcome, please join us at Waterman's for some well=deserved fun and food after the run, for which you can sign up here. You just Gouda be there.

ps Kudos to Adam who came up with this report's killer pun!