While Mr Malcolm's away the kids will play and operation was the game of choice, operation St Lukes that is.

Holding down the fort for the night was meeeee coach Ellie for a West meets East mash-up, over from Brent and raring to go in my new hood.

A jolly housekeeping threw me into the mix straight away and the red tshirts happy faces welcomed me from base camp cafe E5. A quick run through of 1 mission and the task at hand and hellos to 4 new faces the group waiting keenly at the door for the evening to begin.

4 off to mission and 11 on the road to St Lukes, Hackney was covered from top to bottom.

Arriving at st lukes the lovely Kelly was there to greet and showed us the work to be achieved. The gardens were over-run, by the largest collection of stinging nettles in the land.

With gloves at the ready the team set to work pulling hacking, weeding and bin bagging every nettle in sight. But every few moments a soldier would go down "ouch it got me" Another Sting - Somebody call The POLICE.........

With bags of enthusiasm, the crew persevered even having time for some leaf clearing and cleaning up of the kiddies Wendy house which had been left to ruin. We left it sparking and gleaming like new.

To close the session it was drills and spills of sweat over the 100 squat challenge. Yes that's right.....

100 squats!!! This hackney bunch may be wobbly on their one leg run pose freeze frames but they can squat for England and that they did!!

Blessed with no rain, a wonderful task and a group of welcoming delightful athletes who were up for every game and challenge thrown their way, it was an ace night of fun and frollocks in the east.

Thanks for having me Hackney, I'll be back soon!!

ellie x

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE.

---

Gardening at the House of Lords

MISSION IN ACTION

Report by Patrick Luong

This Tuesday evening the air was fresh after a day of rain: perfect for running. Ellie gave a quick briefing and then Kevin, Andy, Antonia and I (Patrick) peeled off from the group to do a mission.

We did a 3 mile tempo run from base camp and were warmly welcomed by the lovely Mr and Mrs Lord at their house. Though Mrs Lord is a keen gardener she's unable to maintain the garden herself at her age and needs help from willing neighbours when they can spare the time.

They were so chuffed to have four pairs of hands turn up at their doorstep and enjoyed hearing about GoodGym.

We were presented with a decent set of tools, gloves and garden waste bags and a classic GoodGym mission: cut and pull the much overgrown and twisted ivy, trim back the fuchsias, weed between the paving slabs and clean up the debris.

After around 40 minutes of chatting about all things: * Santa, * Welsh cakes *Ashley Madison

We'd filled three bags of green waste. That was enough to earn a cereal bar each and many thanks from The Lords.

Andy headed back to base camp while the other three of us were in local territory and went straight home to rest from the fairly hefty run.

Till next time................. Mission Done.