We had a fantastic turn out this evening with two new members and some returners after the Christmas break.

This evenings run was a repeat of last week, so following a warm up of windmill arms and stomping feet and some light jogging we jogged into the night.

Our little group is growing and it was lovely seeing us spreading out down the road whilst chatting to each other. Once at the park we were split into three groups for a fun sprint and recovery game. Once lined up we had a demo from Iain in sprinting and recovery jogging, with our elbows pointed, our heads up high and with a slight lean forward each member of the team took it in turns to sprint to each lamp post - with a recovery jog back. With a little pep talk, everyone was sent off on one last sprint to the furthest lamp post with driving elbows and cheek to cheek ringing in their ears.

Our task this evening was to return to Kids Run Free, to move the junk to the trunk (of the car), split the medals for recycling, repeat a stake out and actually get the stakes in coloured order. There was also a few butts to empty (water butts - so rude) we even put the flags up, to check they were in one piece and we got some sweat on sorting out the sweaters.

At one point we nearly packed a GoodGymer in the car, but luckily he was rescued.

We had a short run back with a few loop backers - the January challenge seems to be inspiring some extra running this week.

With a little cool down Becky filled us in on all the good deeds coming up.

Welcome to Fiona and Graham on their first GoodGym run and a massive congratulations to our first Task Force member Gavin. Also well done to James and Iain for completing their 10th run this evening.

If you've always wanted to come but you're worried about managing the running then join us on Thursday 16th January at The Fat Pug for our starter session. Easy peasy I promise....

This evening we got our 'butts in the right place" to save the environment.

A smallish group of 8 runners this evening, due to christmas festivities and a downpour, ran to clean up the streets of Leamington.

Meeting at the Fat Pug, we gathered in the warm, but wet garden to hear how about "No ifs, No Butts" and how we could 'save the environment one butt at a time'. Simon Perkins joined us to talk about the benefit of portable ashtrays, he is leading on a project to get more smokers to use them instead of littering the streets, our task was to find the smokers of Leamington and offer them a free portable ashtray in return for completing an online questionnaire, an extra bonus would be for each questionaire filled in, £3 is donated to Leamington Night Shelter for Homeless.

So with our bags full of ashtrays and all our christmas lights turned on, including some antlers and a festive hat we did a little warm up and headed off to find the pubs.

Due to the rain and it getting slippery underfoot we headed to the park do do a Parlauf session before it became to wet to race. Splitting into pairs, everyone had a go at sprinting as fast as they could around the park till they met their partner who was walking, they then tagged and swapped, a great effort session that was lots of fun in the rain. Great recovery and some very fast running from a few.

Once we were all sprinted out we started out own pub crawl. We had a slight lack of smokers on our route, it appears only the hardy smokers were out. So with our we "Don't like fag butts and we cannot lie" routine we managed to chat to 7 smokers on our route of 10 pubs/eateries, getting them all to sign up raising £21 for LNS.

Simon, who had a captive audience in The Fat Pug beer garden also signed people up.

On our return leg we had a little breakout group who enjoyed a little loop back on the last hill, a good test of the legs before Christmas.

Once returned to The Fat Pug we did a little stretch and a few of us stayed for a Christmas drink.

Happy Christmas, see you all in the New Year.

Tonight after a quick show of hands for the Myton Dash on December 8th, a total of 13 Reindeers, Elves and runners got together to help out and provide some GoodGym expertise to help LIGHT UP the way into Christmas. Iain led off and all began to follow the lead (a recurring theme throughout the night).

WATT our task for the evening, we had to put up the Christmas lights at Lord Leycester Hospital where we were eagerly welcomed.

After a quick briefing and allocation of LIGHTS, Liz (who traveled from Coventry to temporarily replace our Fallen Leader this week, get well soon Becky) made sure that no one was LEFT IN THE DARK, we split into groups and quickly set to work.

TREEmendous work was spent decorating the trees in the court yard before we could move onto the Great Hall where they were running an auction, although by the time we had untangled lights they were FAIRY close to finishing.

Then there was yet more LIGHT work to be made, in a shop stall befitting of the first Christmas (There were lights are on but nobody Wass home).

Once the auction was finished a brave few were entrusted to hang the decorative bunches of little sticks (I don't know the Christmasey name) from the chandeliers in the Great Hall, fellow runners held the ladders (making sure no-one was ever HERTZ)

We couldn't leave until it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas and we over ran our time sLIGHTly, but as LUX would have it no-one was in a huge rush to return.

A stretch and cool down back at base and a reminder of next weeks task, a mention of a community mission. (Thanks again Liz for being sub leader) We hope to be back to full force next week with Becky recovered from the darstardly Flu.

Ok so it wasn't a tub, but a very small community centre that needed a deep clean tonight.

We took over the pub this evening as many runners came out of the dark to light up the night, welcome to our new runners Andy and Cherry, and some returning runners as well as our stalwarts. We must be fun if they come back....

Tonight Becky promised us a surprise, instead of running up a massive hill we took a more gentle route to Packmores Community Centre, not quite the Gap but run by the same volunteers.

On arrival, once we found the hidden gem, thanks to Iain for navigating the door lock, we found a pile of cleaning equipment and a list of lovely jobs to do. Dividing into groups, there was a rush for the soft play area, everyone got their marigolds on and started to clean.

Emptying shelves, cleaning potties, mopping the floor, scrubbing the cupboards, sweeping the mess, wiping the tables, and seeing how many people you can fit in a tiny kitchen.

Mel gave us a cracking joke - What's the plumbers favourite tree? Toiletrees!!! - Think she might need to work on her jokes.

We had to have a count down to leave as everyone wanted to leave it spotless. Hopefully we did them proud.

On the return run we had a challenge - the handicap hill sprint. Setting off in intervals of intensity we raced back up the last hill, some brilliant use of arm drive and high knees was seen, and a lot of hardcore effort by our newer runners. We've been working on High knees so this was a great test to see how much we had learnt.

On return to the pub, big thanks to Iain for leading the cool down and Holly for collecting more numbers for the Whatsapp group.

News was shared and some of the group stayed on to carb load, or thats what we're renaming it now.

Till next week - thanks for coming.