Spring was finally in the air last night, as 30 amazing runners met to do a huge job in a local community garden.

We were joined by some lovely new faces. GoodGym, please welcome Dilly, Karen and Christine!

It had been a fabulous weekend of racing with several amazing Wandsworthians smashing the Big Half the day before and still turning up last night - put your hands together for Beth, Matthew, Emily, Christopher and Christine!

Don't forget that we've got another chance to have fun this week at GoodGym's massive monthly social where we'll be cheering all the lovely running and good deeds that every GoodGym area has been doing over the past few weeks. Check out the details here.

Before we headed outside to warm up, we also gave Christopher and Beth, who, over the past month, topped the leader boards for distance and good deeds with 208 kilometres and 12 respectively. Way to go you two!

Raring to go after a warm up that featured jumping jordans, high fives and fast feet we set our stravas, and with Luke backmarking, headed off on the 2.4 kilometres run to Paradise community gardens.

This amazing space, which was once scrubland, sits right opposite Wandsworth prison, and is now a wonderful resource for the local community. It has hives, a huge yurt, beds where fruit and veg is grown and so much more. However, they had an overwhelming task to do, featuring an enormous pile of wood chip and a lot of pathways, which is where the GoodGym team stepped in to help. Getting stuck straight in we grabbed wheelbarrows, spades, buckets and rakes and began spreading out the woodchip along the many muddy paths that wove their way through the beds, sheds and tunnels.

It was very satisfying work seeing the mud slowly being replaced by lovely woodchip, and before long the pile had disappeared and we had done a great upper body workout. Double checking the garden before we left, we narrowly avoided locking Simon and his bike in, and headed over to Wandsworth Common for our fitness session. Tonight's workout featured aerobic and conditioning drills, and we pushed our glutes and core muscles hard with frog jumps, jack knives, planks and squats before a quick run back to our starting point in an attempt to beat the rain.

Fantastic job tonight everyone! Next week we're doing an important task for disability charity Scope when we'll be delivering a load of their donation bags. There's masses of them, so we'll need all the help we can get! Sign up here for another Monday well spent!

A cracking team of 35 runners met last night to tackle a new task, and take on a tough time trial. What a way to spend a Monday evening.

It all started at the BAC, where we first welcomed some lovely new runners in the shape of Helen, Tessa and Emma - give these GoodGymers a big cheer, everybody!

We also had a fantastic week of running to celebrate. Well done to - deep breath - Paul and Chris, who both smashed the Hampton Court Half yesterday, Helen, Emily, Paul, Davinder, Morag, Luke, Jessie and John who all spent a very romantic Valentine's Day racing either 5k or 10k (with all the ladies recording PBs!), to Rachel, who ran a very solid time in a half marathon on Sunday, as did Brian in the Wokingham half. Fantastic racing guys, you really are doing yourselves and GoodGym a credit.

We also had a special milestone tonight - one that we shall celebrate properly next week. A massive congratulations to the lovely Alyx who ran her 100th good deed last night, and got her wings. What a star.

We kicked off the run with a warm up and went round the group finding out what we each would take as our inanimate luxury to a desert island. Only one of us would pack our running shoes (GUYS!), but musical instruments were top of the list, followed by a lifetime supply of chocolate, wine, gin and books. Sounds rather lovely.

Our task tonight was just over a mile away, at the Leonard Cheshire centre. This amazing charity supports disabled people in the community, helping them to fulfil their potential and live the lives they choose. It is of invaluable support to local people, offering the opportunity to live independently, to contribute and participate fully in society.

We arrived after a speedy run down there, and immediately divided up into groups of three to tackle the list of jobs. They included several painting tasks, rubbish clearing, garden sorting and washing windows, and after a few minutes organising ourselves we jumped to it.

Just under an hour later we were done, and with a light decoration of red paint (nicely matching our GG tshirts) we jogged over to Battersea Park to do our fitness session. It was a tough one tonight, but everybody gave it their all. We marked out the route of a nice flat time trial, and talked about a few technical points to help us run efficiently. The idea of pushing yourself on the same time trial regularly is that you can get yourself a nice benchmark, and then monitor your progress effectively. Speed training is also a fantastic way to improve your running, practice pacing and get fitter.

Everybody smashed the run, all crossing the line in very respectable times indeed. Keep those arms pumping, people! Don't forget, it's all about the pocket to socket...

A short run back and that hill , and all that as left to round off another great Monday was a quick stretch. Sign up for some more GG fun, same time, same place next week. Nice one, team.

We're over half way through our January challenge team, and we've still got a way to go - although we're smashing the distance, with 118 out of 241 good deeds done, we're just under half way there. If you needed any more encouragement to get out there and do good, then this is it! Also, if you have any friends who are interested in getting into GoodGym, but not sure what it's all about, then point them towards our starter session on Thursday. Everybody's welcome!

It's been a very busy week in Wandsworth, with some great park run performances. Paul raced 10k at Dorney Lake, while a few other Wandsworthers did the monthly long run that GoodGym is putting on in the run up to the London marathon. If you're interested in the next one, which starts from Ealing on the 11th February then do sign up - everybody is welcome! There are also a couple of races coming up on the 4th March; the Big Half and Herne Hill Harrier's 10k. Let me know if you're interested in either.

We had some very special guests last night in the shape of Peter from Enable and Wandsworth Council, and Peter Garrido from Sky Sports. Last year GoodGym Wandsworth had the honour of winning a prize at the Active Wandsworth awards, and the guys came down to take a little video of us at work.

As we warmed up outside we had a quick chat about what motivates us to run. For loads of us it was to support mental health, for others it was to see friends and make us feel good, and for some it was the thought of those medals that gets us out the door.

It was a very short run to our task tonight at the amazing Devas Club, an organisation that supports the youth of Wandsworth's physical and mental health. So after a quick run up to the common we had a few minutes of interval file running to really warm up before heading back to the centre. Our job there was to move a load of furniture from the building into the skip they had brought in fr the job. After only 20 minutes of lifting and shifting, the skip was full and the place was looking a lot tidier. Well done team, it would have been massively time consuming and hard work for the volunteers at the centre, who were able to focus their time on the young people instead, while we managed to get it done in no time at all. The power of the many!

Job done, we smashed through a very quick pyramid of exercises, looking mainly at glutes and our lower body, before running back up to the common to do a session on ABCs (agility, balance and coordination) plus some sprinting. Of course, we couldn't finish off the night with a neglected core, and everybody put in a solid minute of plank. Fantastic job.

A quick run downhill (for a change) to our starting point, with a Wandsworth finish and a nice few stretches saw the end of the night. And a great one it was too! Well done everybody for all the hard work. Next week we're off to help out a residential home for deaf people, sign up for more GoodGym fun here.

Apparently yesterday was officially the most depressing day of the year.

Not on Wandsworth's watch! We kicked Blue Monday's ass with some random acts of kindness, a couple of brilliant community tasks, an abs blast, a pilates session for runners and some speed work.

We started off the night with one of our favourite things - welcoming lovely new runners to the group. Let's give a massive cheer to Fraser, Nicole, Matthew, Amy, Jessica, Lois and Charlie. Great to have you all with us - hope to see you next week too!

We also congratulated all those super park runners who got out there on Saturday morning. If you haven't done a park run yet, check it out like the 130 000 runners did last week, and prepare to get hooked on the free 5k time trials that take place all over the UK every Saturday morning at 9am.

We had a recap on our January challenge which is getting there. We have a goal of 241 good deeds and 1200 kms this month, so please get linked to Strava and get those good deeds clocked up! A huge well done to everybody who has contributed so much already.

To counteract Blue Monday, we decided to release a kindness bomb on London. Everybody picked out a different random act of kindness from the bag of joy on their way out to the warm up. Our job was to do 43 separate nice things over the course of the week to cheer other people up. We'd love to hear how they went!

During our warm up we were joined by the lovely Laura, the new Tower Hamlets trainer - welcome Laura! - and after a quick knees up to get us warm, we set off for Battersea. It was a short run there, split up with a few conditioning exercises, and we soon arrived ready to tackle a deep clean of the Venue community centre, and to clear a much neglected tunnel.

Hadas, who manages the community centre, told us about the incredible projects the organisation runs. Once a month the team there goes out in the night with hot food and drinks to support the local homeless people. This couldn't be more important in the winter months, so if you'd like to help out then let me know. This great place also puts on Feast and Film nights, where food that would otherwise be thrown away gets made into delicious meals by the brilliant Hadas, and a film (usually highlighting an environmental issue) is played. This community centre is massively important in bringing together the local community, so it's great we can get involved.

While one team set about giving the kitchen, fridges and bathrooms a good clean, the other half nipped down to the a nearby tunnel. This underpass is often a real mess and uncared for, so we set about sweeping, clearing and tidying the place up. After 20 minutes of work it was spotless. Well done team!

While we finished our jobs, we smashed out a quick five minute abs blast before running over to Battersea park where professional pilates instructor Laura took us for an intense pilates for runners session which saw us effectively work our lower body and core. This is really important for good running form and to prevent injuries, so thanks very much Laura!

We also knocked out a bit of pace work during our run back to the Arts Centre, saving something in the tank for that last hill. We needed a good old stretch after all that work. Finishing off the night sweaty but happy we turned Blue Monday a lovely shade of GoodGym red.

Well done everybody! Don't forget that next week we have a special run. Would love to see you there!