What a great turn out of runners for a Tuesday night in Kingston! With 17 runners warming up outside the Guidhall our run leader for the evening, Samia, had us heel flicking, walking our hands out to a plank, lunging and going through the essential pre-run stretches to prevent injury. Before long we were all warmed-up and ready to do our quick run through the market square and off towards Canbury Gardens and on to our task for the evening!

It was to St Luke’s CE Primary School we ran this evening! With a link made by one of our own Kingston Goodgym runners, we were tasked with some clearing of leaves from the scooter and bike racks as well as the cleaning out of gutters and drains outside the classroom’s conservatories. While it seemed like they were big tasks to take on when we arrived, it didn’t take long before we’d divided to conquer our mission and got into the groove (between each rack over the gutters too). With great speed of scooping and sweeping, it wasn’t long before all gutters were cleared on the Key Stage 2 classroom side of the school and our task leader took us over to the Key Stage One side to continue while there was still time to clear as much as we could.

While the gutters were being cleared by half of the group, we couldn’t be’leaf’ how quickly a few bags were filled with the leaves from around the bike stands by the other half! Many hands made light work as the bags of mud and sludge from gutters got heavier! Once the last sweep left little ‘broom’ for improvement where the scooters stood, it was time to ‘leaf’ the bags by the shed and prepare for our run back.

With a final quick monkeying around on the trim trail of the playground, it was time for a group photo and school was out!

Well done to all on this Kingston group run for your support of a local school that has a big part in our local community. We were lucky to meet some new runners this evenings as well and send a big cheer to Scott and Moemen on their first group run with us and Owen and John returning for their second. Huge congratulations to Claire for her achievement of 50 good deeds and to Rob for 100 good deeds in Kingston! And thanks to Caroline for backmarking and Kate for being a wonderful taskowner and writing the run report! Our community is a better place because of your great contributions!

We’re back to school again next week so sign up to join us on a run and task to support St Paul’s CE Primary School next Tuesday!

What a glorious day for a starter run! 14 of us met at the Guildhall, to run 5km and get physical with a great task of clearing the paths at Surbiton Cemetery.

We were very lucky today to welcome 6 new runners - Rush, Zoe, [Nancy]Nancy), Matt, Emily, and John as well as the return of Ruth who we haven't seen in a while - give them all a cheer!

After another groovy warm up guaranteed to get our hands out of our pockets and get us mobilised, we set our stravas and envisaged the hot chocolate we would hunt down on our return into Kingston town centre.

Although cold we ran in the beautiful sunshine , a little different to our regular Tuesday nights in darkness and this made all the difference for the task at hand. When we arrived at the Cemetery we could see what great work had already been achieved by the group a few weeks ago and now we were here to use the light to dig into a overgrown grass verge of the path and clear it so that people can get to the headstones more easily.

We each picked up a shovel or a spade - I'm unsure which is which but which ever one we had they were great at clearing the path. This was some really satisfying work, a great way to get our muscles working and doing a good deed at the same time. Once all the grass and soil were lifted it was time to load up the wheelbarrows with it for a race to get it out of sight to expose a clear and user friendly path.

Great work everyone, such a great team effort!

Hope to see you on a Tuesday night group run - 6.45pm at Main Guildhall or if you cannot make Tuesdays, look out on the website for other runs and good deeds you can get involved in