Tonight, 4 of us tackled an overgrown area in a community garden.

We were joined by a couple of local community builders and cleared the area under the light of the full moon (and some pretty bright torches).

Supervised by Rolo the cat, we made a huge difference to the patch ready for the residents to use.

Tonight was a very special evening, we got to help out our long time partners at Wonford Planters with their ground preparation - doing a fab job clearing the ground of weeds and grass ready for wildflower seeding next year.

Great work by all 4 runners, digging, cutting and raking in a great community spirit.

A huge huge celebration and congratulations to Lucy R on reaching earning her wings with her 100th good deed tonight! Doing 100 tasks is no small thing, it takes a lot of dedication and we are all so proud of her. Lucy provided some wonderful home-baked brownies and while the sparklers didn't quite light up it was a very nice way to celebrate. Who's going to be next to hit their 50 or 100 milestone?!

Great work from Rachel and Samantha as always and great to see you both.

Next week we're back at the secret garden! The session is full but hopefully I'll have exciting news soon about if we're doing it as our first group run in ages!

Craig

8 GoodGymmers spent an hour clearing a huge planter of weeds, nettles, grass and thistles. It is now ready to be taken over by the local school who will hopefully be planting something colourful to brighten up the street. We worked hard and filled loads of bags with garden waste in a short space of time.

Thanks to Emma for joining us for her first Exeter mission after recently moving to the South West from London...we hope to see you again soon. And goodbye to Claudia who is sadly moving back to Barcelona...we will miss you a lot and hope you come back and visit soon!

7 GoodGymer did an excellent job pulling up some tough weeds with the wonderful Wonford Planters and delivering community leaflets along some long roads!

It was a lovely sunny evening and we had the great pleasure of having a tourist joining us: Sally from GG Camden! It was great having you along and we were all so impressed to hear you had walked all the way to Exeter from Exmouth to join us!

Not only did we have a GoodGym tourist with us, we also had Ellie from Exeter Connect with us. She took some photos and little films that will be used for their launch later on this summer. A great community initiative!

Our tasks this evening was to help Wonford Planters with some gardening and also deliver some leaflets about a new Health & Wellbeing Hub that hopefully will be built in the area. We quickly divided the group in two groups and set off working.

We got a full-body workout whilst doing good!

The gardening group did a fantastic job, pulling up some great big weeds, really working those arms! The leafleting group worked their legs a bit more, clocking up a lot of steps. To complete the evening we finished of with a core session in the park nearby. You guys all smashed it! What a great night!

On Sunday we have a community litter pick with Exe Nordic Walkers, it would be great to have you along! Over the next few weeks our lovely taskforce will lead our sessions as I am away on holiday. Have the best of times and I cant wait to see you all when I get back!

8 GoodGymers worked with Wonford Planters to weed and tidy up three huge planters on Tuesday evening. The planters line Burnthouse Lane, and some wonderful plants and herbs had become enveloped in grass and some particularly thorny thistles!

We ripped out the weeds and chopped up some well established unwanted plants with tools, clearing the planters for beautiful new plants and flowers to be planted by the local community team.

After an hour's hard work we headed off to Ludwell Valley park to complete an enjoyable mix of fartleks, speed training, circuits, and a jolly nice chat.

A very special shout out this week to Craig Barber who has completed 3 Community Missions in 3 days!

We'll be back next week to work on the rest of the planters!

9 runners didn't let the rain put them off and ran 6.5 k to help Wonford Planters clear a wildflower area in the Burnthouse lane estate. We had two new university students joining us this evening: Sophie who joined us for her first GoodGym run ever, and Holly, who has done GoodGym runs in Colchester before. Welcome to Exeter! We loved having you with us and we hope you will come back soon again to get fit by doing good with us!

Wow! It certainly felt like autumn had arrived when we gathered outside the Phoenix for our dynamic warm-up exercises. It was dark and blustery and the ground was wet from the rain that had been pouring down all day. But none of the amazing GG runners who came along this evening seemed bothered by any of that! The atmosphere was great, everyone was chatting and laughing.

The fact that we are here instead of sitting at home watching "Bake-Off" shows how motivated we are!

We stopped to re-group at regular intervals so that no-one got lost or left behind whilst making our way to the task. A long section of the run route was lined by stone walls so we certainly got our fair share of wall squats done this evening. What is a GG group run without wall squats anyway?! A big thank you to Sarah for back marking both ways!

At the task we met with Jenny and her lovely volunteer gardening group, Wonford Planters. The group works very hard to maintain the green spaces in the area after cuts to public funding meant that these areas became unkept and overgrown. Last week we helped them with various gardening tasks at Laburnum roundabout and this week we helped them clear a wildflower area. We made sure the seeds from the wildflowers were spread out in the flower beds and we then pulled out the dead plants. We must have filled over 10 big bin liners with dead plants!

Fantastic work at the task everyone! The Wonford Planters have really valued our help! 17 of us working for 35 minutes last week, and 9 of us working for 35 minutes this week, adds up to a total of 15.5 hours work!

Sarah also carried out a spontaneous upper body work-out session by doing biceps curls and shoulder lifts with the filled bin liners! I think we can let her off for refusing to do star jumps after this excellent initiative!

On the return run we did some interval training again, this time by forming a single line of runners and having the last runner in the group overtaking the whole line of runners. This way of doing intervals is great in a mixed ability group as everyone can join in. So great to hear everyone cheer each other on! We also stopped in Princesshay for some circuit training, before we returned to the Phoenix for some stretches. Amazing effort throughout the whole evening everyone!

Next week we have a short and flat 3 k run to Newtown’s primary school where we will help improve their school ground and possibly some indoor areas too. The school relies on the help of parents and volunteers for this kind of work so lets get a big group of us together and make a real difference. As the run is shorter than usual we will also have time for a fun-filled fitness session. It will be great to get fit by doing good together! Sign up here to come along! We can’t wait to see you there!

We are also meeting at Exeter Riverside park run this Saturday. Park run is a great way to work on your 5 k run time so come along and join us! We'll have coffee and cake afterwards too, obviously this is just as important as running!

Finally, you are all heroes for coming along this blustery evening! I think we can all agree that it FEELS AMAZING to brave the weather, get fresh air, run and carry out a good deed! Lets keep up the good work together! See you soon!