It was great to have a crowd of new faces with us tonight - welcome Fiona, Thomasina, Charlotte, Lia and Sarah!

Carb Load

We all know that we should carb load before a serious run, so we started tonight off with a serious game of Hot Potato. Runners were knocked out as we passed the squat jump around the circle, until eventually we crowned Richard as the least coach-y potato of the night.

Mount-pelier

Warmed up, off we set to Montpelier, where Bristol Waste had received three separate reports of litter in the past few days. This involved much more uphill running than many of the group bargained for, but some asked for more and set off on some hill sprints on the way.

When we arrived, the group split into three to cover the areas Bristol Waste had told us about. In actual fact, the streets varied from littered to pretty spotless - had we been beaten to it by an alternative group of do-gooders?! We still gathered in 5 bags of litter, which we left in our designated spot for Bristol Waste to collect.

Something fishy

Not wanting to waste our uphill run to get there, we also spread the word about how older people can get help from GoodGym in the area and did some work for the Yellow Fish scheme. We chalked yellow fish next to the drains in the area to increase awareness of people not putting water pollutants down their local drains to improve wildlife and water quality in local rivers and streams.

After all of this was all complete, we ran back to base, with just enough time to ensure we got to stop for squats, stairs and chair holds along the way!

We are ONE!

Last night we turned one year old! A huge thanks to all that have been involved with @GGSheff to make it what it is today a really great bunch of people from all sorts of backgrounds and running abilities that have come together to do good in their community and to get fitter. You are all truely a fantastic bunch!

Following a brief inside photo now the clocks have changed we set off to a brand new task in Kelham Island with In2Change a fantastic organisation that work with young offenders to avoid repeat offending and provide users with skills and education at the centre.

On arriving at In2Change we were greeted by MAGIC MARC & BRILLIANT BRIAN who gave us a tour of the building and the project and got us tooled up for the nights task.

As the planned paint job had already taken place we went for plan B which involved some painting of doors and some cleaning of the gym which needed some love to bring it back to sparkling splendor.

Both Brian and Marc were very happy with the efforts of the group and thanked all before we headed off to Craft & Dough for our anniversary celebrations where we were surprised with some generous Prosecco from 'THE KING' Steph Gilmer in his abscence and some fantastic GG cupcakes from chief organiser of the meal Kim Longbon. Thanks to both for your extra efforts and to all that attended for coming together to celebrate @GGSheff becoming one!

Here's to another fantastic year!

Last night in Wandsworth we started the week right with a short and speedy run, an equally short and speedy task, plus a fun fitness session.

Stephanie, William, Alice and Lynn all joined us for their very first GoodGym group run last night with some fantastic running, so give them all a cheer!

We had some great news last night, with a couple of Wandsworth runners smashing the Oxford Half Marathon on Sunday and still making it to the group run - Tom and Matt, well done!

The run was short-ish so we made sure we took our time warming up to run in the cool night air, and heard about all the ways in which everyone takes care of their own mental wellbeing - of course GoodGym and running took the top spots, with wine and baths also scoring highly. Running and exercise are great ways to de-stress and your body will get a rush of endorphins, ensuring you feel good! One runner wrote an article about it all here.

We took a speedy 2.5km run down to Alderbrook Primary School, with David backmarking, to move some furniture from the top of the school down to the bottom. After a quick photo we were shown to the room where all the furniture was stored - it was about 4 flights of stairway up to the top of the school, so we knew we were in for a good leg and arm workout. Everyone got stuck straight in and split up into groups to carry chairs, tables and shelves all the way down to the playground where everything got stored in a small out-building. With so many hands helping out it was all over quickly and we were ready for our run back to BAC.

We stopped on the common for a longer fitness session where we found out who is scared of spiders and who cycles to work amid all the planking, sumo squats and reverse crunches. As we finished the task so quickly we even had time for some quick games of fish and chips and duck duck goose!

Thanks for having me to lead the run Wandsworth. Ana will be back in her rightful place next week when we visit Wendelsworth Community Garden to see our GG Tree.