7 runners ran 4km to help the Friends of Chestnuts Park weed and mulch round the new trees.

Well six runners. Big cheers to Marusha, who wasn't running this week, but cycled alongside us on a funky rented folding bike. Francis was our tail runner this week. Abby rocked up just as we headed outside for the warm-up, so missed out on Rita's impossible impossible talent ;)

When we got to Chestnuts park we were shown the baby trees, which we'd previously helped by hammering the supporting bamboo stakes into the ground. The poor things were being invaded by cow parsley. So we split into two teams to tackle this task. Weeding round the trees, and fetching mulch from the other side of the park, to spread and prevent future weed growth. The dust and pollen flying around were triggering a few allergies, but wheelbarrow duty seemed to be a good way to avoid the worst of it.

With a good stretch of path done, we moved onto the fitness session. We voted on Ultimate Frisbee, or the 800m Conkering Chestnuts dash?

Why not both?

The Frisbee was a great high intensity exercise, with plenty of bursts of sprinting to get into position. I failed to keep score, but pretty sure team Primary Colours T-shirts edged it. #RedThunder!

And even after that, Francis managed to set a Personal Record for the 800m sprint! Give him a cheer.

Next week, we're heading over to Tottenham Green, hope to see you there!

8 runners ran 5km to help sow some spring seeds for the Westbury Banks Nature Reserve.

It was good to see Danny wander over from Brent for a bit of GoodGym tourism, go give him a cheer!

It was already a warm day, but that doesn't mean we skipped the warm-up. Some high knees and drag runs soon got everyone's heart rates up. We wound our way over to Westbury, with wall sits and planks while waiting for the group to gather up.

Luke welcomed us to the task, and showed us a series of planters they'd had donated recently. The team split in two, with some filling the planters, and other tidying up the spot where they'd would be deployed. With them filled the next step was to fill them with #WildflowersForLondoners, and artistically arrange some logs around them. Which of course meant ferrying the logs from the other end of the Nature Reserve. With that done, our time was up, and time to head back. Really looking forward to some return trips to see the flowers in bloom!

On the way back we paused in Downhills Park, for a reverse pyramid of burpees, opposite elbow horizontal mountain climbers, and vertical mountain climbers. The technique of slapping alternative knees or dancing like a puppet was debated, but overthinking it just makes the mountain climbers even harder!

Then when everyone was good and tired, we did a couple of short runs, to show the importance of the core strength we'd been working on. Imagining a balloon pulling you up from the crown of your head sounds silly, but makes a huge difference to running efficiency, especially when tired.

Then back to base for stretches.

We'll be putting together team to Race the Neighbours from GG Barnet on 1st July, so watch this space!

After next week's run, we'll have our monthly social if you feel a bit peckish post-run.

This week seven brilliant GoodGym-ers ran 2.5km to help Chestnuts Park mulch trees. We were joined by THREE new runners: Natalie, Sophie and Raphael – Give 'em a cheer!

After some traffic issues and a minor locker malfunction, we were off to a late start. I stalled for time with bonus warm up exercises and some resistance running in pairs, while the technical problems were dealt with inside.

We then made our way to Chestnuts park to meet Ceri and co. We were quickly assigned our tasks, with half the team on digging and laying duties and the other half on mulch collecting. In half an hour we'd re-mulched seven fruit trees, some of which still had some left over from when we did it last year. We met the famous Willow Weaver and were told maybe we could do some weaving next time, which is a very exciting task prospect indeed.

We then said our goodbyes, packed up our tools and headed over to our starting line for our Chestnuts 800m dash. Some real speedy running from the gang, but with some rather twisty arm drives - so we focused on getting that alignment right, building power in the elbow drive and trying not to cross the hands across the body. This was particularly challenging for all our newbies who'd not done it before, but over time these things get easier. It takes time to relearn new shapes; but the more you practice, the more natural these things become and then the more efficient your running will get.

We then made our way back to base, with Cathy our trusty back-marker and Hazel speeding ahead to lead us home.

This week's pun was the brain child of Ollie