I love it when a plan comes together!

On 25th November , 9 GoodGymers gathered from Richmond, Kingston and Camden to take part in the Kingston 10km.

We managed to keep the rain at bay, careful not to utter the words "aren't we lucky it's not...." However it was cccooooolllllddd! There were layers, upon layers, jackets being worn almost to the start line and funky warm up moves just so we had some blood pumping through our veins.

Before the race there was talk of "magic magnets" for race numbers, the amazing amount of money Nic and Sarah had raised for Arthritis Research and slightly more worrying topics such as who drank what last night as part of their "pre-race training" and being kept awake by a pooping pup. The conversations continued over the start line as I was reminded why I run with GoodGym - the people! Forgetting about my finish time I enjoyed chatting to GG members about life as I enjoyed the route along the river. If my fingers and toes still weren't warm, my heart definitely was!

We attempted a sprint finish, (nausea) followed but it was worth it! We gathered our things, congratulated each other and celebrated with hot chocolates!

Lovely to run with you all

Ten degrees and daylight – what a difference a week makes. A compact but efficient team of eight runners met at Wholefoods for the first British Summertime GoodGym run, including new runner, Sophie (welcome!), Louisa back for her second run, Richard back for his third run and a guest appearance from Ealing runner, Larissa.

Our task for the evening was a return visit to ETNA, the East Twickenham community centre in St Margarets, to carry on beating back the weeds and to tidy up the herb garden. But first, Mark, our pocket rocket trainer, wanted to make sure we wouldn’t forget him whilst on the second week of his holiday and had challenged us with some hill work.

Off we set through Richmond’s town centre, up Richmond Hill to a fabulous viewpoint of the Thames just dipping into shadow as the sun set and here we briefly paused before running down and up a steep incline linking Richmond Hill and Petersham Road. It has to be said that I’m not sure I was getting too many friendly looks as the team reached the summit… Now I know how Mark feels.

Then it was (mostly) all downhill, along the river and over the bridge to ETNA in St Margarets. ETNA is a great neighbourhood community centre offering all sorts of services from preschool to pilates to counselling and support groups. Once there, everyone got stuck into some weeding, clearing the ground for mulching the next time but leaving the bluebells to flower for a few weeks. The herb garden was tidied up nicely and smelling fragrant by the time we packed up for the run back to Wholefoods.

Mark’s back next week and wouldn’t a bank holiday run be just the thing to work off some of the chocolate eggs you get through at the weekend?

In other news, we’re looking for a Richmond mission to film. If you are running to a coach who has a task that might be suitable for a mission, let Mark know.

And by GG we mean GirlGym this time. It was Elaine’s turn to lead our nine all-female runners tonight in Richmond on a chilly evening whilst Mark’s away on a (31 degree!) holiday. Still, the cold weather couldn’t stop us from getting out there.

We had a quick warm up (and we really did need it!) outside Wholefoods before heading off up past the Richmond shops and over Richmond Bridge. From there we took a left and fell into a nice brisk pace along the dark riverside path around Marble Hill Park with our head torches lighting the way. As we rejoined the road in Twickenham, we headed back towards Richmond and over Richmond Bridge for a second time before arriving at our task.

Tonight we were back at one of our regular task-givers at the Vineyard Community Centre in Richmond, who run several services for those in need within the local borough. On arrival Desiree offered us some lemony water as she told us about the amazing things they do as an organisation and the help they provide to so many people. Luckily the generosity of the local community and staff at the Vineyard means that they are able to offer some incredible help to people in need. One of these services is providing showers, clothes and food for those who are homeless or struggling, and tonight’s task was to sort through toiletry and sock donations and separate them into categories so that they can distribute them easily to the centre users.

Within minutes we had separate piles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toothpaste, combs, and socks, ready for the Vineyard to give out freely to centre visitors. It seems a lot of the donors are frequent flyers, so there were also lots of eye masks, ear plugs and pens, too!

Before we knew it time was up, and after a couple of quick photos we went back into the cold night for a very short distance back to Wholefoods. We then realised that for some reason we all turned down the free cakes, much to Kate and Sundara’s disappointment! Sorry guys, you shouldn’t have been so polite!

Thanks, Desiree, for having us (again), and thanks, Elaine, for leading us on our run tonight. Fingers crossed for some warmer temperatures next Monday.

Welcome to new runner, Louisa, we hope you enjoyed your first run with GoodGym Richmond this evening.

Thanks for a great report, Laura! Two quick bits of news to add on: we're off to the pub on the 9th of April after our run (The Shaftesbury on Kew Road), details are on the GoodGym website - pop it in your diaries! And Kate mentioned that Camden GoodGym are doing another BIG task on the 28th of March - they're looking for 50 people to participate. Kate signed up last time and it sounded brilliant. So if you fancy something a bit different and an opportunity to meet lots of GG runners from different areas, this might be a good one. Check out the Group Runs for Camden on the website.

Try these pun for size!!

We knew we'd 'lost our silver lining', but then 'we couldn't see the bigger picture'at all as there were 'litterally no tools' so we thought 'what a load of rubbish'. But then there was none.. so we felt like 'you've been FRAMED' which made us as 'Mad as March Hare's'

We could simply leave this as our run report but here's our attempt at making sense of tonight...

10 of us met in Wholefoods and the confusion started before we even begun our run...."why is it still so cold" we asked, many of us missing our layers that we thought we didn't need for tonight. To warm up, we warmed up! On Richmond Green, minding the lamp post as we shimmied, stretched and "stirred" (that's right isn't Jane?) Before running a lap of the green and heading towards ETNA via St Margarets.

When we reached ETNA we went on the hunt for pictures, hooks, and a hammer...after a few moments of weaving in and out of various rooms, feeling like we were playing Cluedo (I think it was the Run Trainer, in the Hall, with the hammer) we were at a loss as to where our tools could be...luckily Mark had another task up his sleeve, that's right, we were double tasking tonight , actually we were tripled tasked tonight but a late cancellation at Silver Birches meant the focus was on picture hanging to brighten up the ETNA walls. However with no tools we had to swiftly move onto our second task - litter picking on Richmond Hill. Due to Mark's organisational skills , litter picks were ready for us to collect from ETNA so we practiced our Tug of War skills by sharing out the litter bags and began our journey up Richmond Hill with picks in hand.

We ran along the river, some of us unable to avoid picking up litter that we saw along the way, before we ended up at Buccleuch Gardens to hunt out rubbish in an effort to #KeepRichmondClean as part of #GBSpringClean. Some of us ventured deep into the woods and managed to find some Richmond debris and some of us...er..herm Mark,, managed to get lost.

Like a force of nature we did some speedy work in minutes and then trotted back over the bridge to return the litter pickers to their new home at ETNA, before heading to Wholefoods.

So although the task wasn't quite what we expected...we got more than we bargained for and our silver lining returned when we realised we had run 8km instead of the predicted 5km.

Welcome to Chris on your first run and it was good to see a new runner who tried to even out the ratio of male to female, hope to see you next week. Welcome back to Claire and Jenny who we have missed running with us.

Good luck to Jane and Laura for their 10km's this weekend.

Oh and Mark shouted out please pass his regards to Desiree next week

When we started out we were cold as ice but by the end we were just part of the furniture.

It was potentially the coldest Richmond run yet and as a Run Trainer I had visions of doing a lot of multi tasking tonight but all my fears cast aside with a warm smile from every runner that came through the Wholefoods door. We were 13 in the end which was lucky as we had heaps to do at Richmond Furniture Scheme.

On completing our brisk 5km run there (more if u didn't know the shortcut) we were met by the lovely Sharon who greeted us with "who's up for a cup of tea?" (which normally I would decline but I swear on a night like tonight a brass monkey would have said "2 sugars please").

So with the promise of a cuppa our runners set about an array of tasks , ranging from dirt shifting, sanding furniture, cleaning the kitchen , doing the washing up, hoovering and dusting.

I don't know how much you can fit into a 30 minute slot but we did it all and managed to get a few gulps of Rosie Lee (and the odd birthday chocolate...thank you Holly) before we turned to face the biting cold on our 5km run back.

It was great to get so many of us back to Richmond Furniture Scheme, they have so many things going on that we can assist with and it is all for such a great cause. This is a great charity that restores, renovates and provides furniture to those that are in need financially. They have been in operation for some 25 years doing good in our community.

Well played all you runners who attended tonight, such heroes and I hope you are all defrosting with your feet up and a hot chocolate as you read this report, shorter run next week, I promise!

Welcome to Rob and Amy , great to have you running with us.

Well done to Holly and Jenny and everyone else who ran the Winter 10km yesterday.

If you have signed up for the mission this weekend have fun and if you are still interested in taking part check out the link in the Whatsapp group

London GoodGym social for this month is all happening here where you can vote for the pun of the year or you can cast your vote here - surely we can make it onto this list next year! Come on Richmond!

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??"