30 GoodGym'ers ran 8km as they went back to school to lend a helping hand

With Ana away in France enjoying the faboulous French cuisine and drinks I was left in charge to lead her Wandsworth group on a slightly fresh but dry February evening. A big welcome to Augusta, Ellie, Georgia, Georgina, Megan, Rianne and Rob, who all joined us for either their first EVER GoodGym run or first GoodGym Wandsworth run - hope to see you all again very soon! Wow! So many new faces tonight amongst the wonderful Wandsworth regulars, thank you all for coming along.

With a large crowd gathered in the Battersea Arts Centre's Scratch Bar we all headed across to our regular 'Bees Knees' room where after opting against sitting in the tiny chair I ran through a quick intro and round-up of the week's news.

You snooze you news...

1. February Long Run - This Sunday, starting at 9.30am or 10.30am depending on the pace you would like to run from Brixton Station. For all the details and to sign up, click here.
2. Morden Hall Park - Trust10 Trail Run - Also on Sunday, meet at 8.30am near the White Bridge in Morden Hall Park. Sign up here. It is FREE - there are no admission charges at Morden Hall Park.
3. Community Missions - This Sunday we will be following-up our group run visit to complete the big painting challenge at the sea scouts HQ in Putney, sign up here. On Sat 9th March there is a sorting task at St Mungo's Reconnection Post in Hammersmith, sign up here. No DBS check is required for a community mission.
4. Mission Changes - Make sure you read this week's 'Goodweek' email about how they are changing and also check your settings to make sure you're ready for the call-up! If you'd like to get involved with missions you need to be DBS checked - please sign up for a doc check and bring along your documents for checking.

School runnings

With a short pulse raising warm-up and the name and number count completed we headed off on our 4km run down to our task tonight at Riversdale Primary School. Following a couple of brief pauses to regroup, where of course the time was filled with a favourite exercise, the wall sit, along with some squat knee taps and some single-leg exercises to work on the ABCs - Agility, Balance and Coordination - aimed to strengthen the muscles and improve running form.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at Riversdale Primary School where we were warmly greeted at the school gate by the PE teacher, Claire. Claire led us into the school and briefly explained the age range of the school and some of the activities that the school children currently get involved with, as well as the upcoming Daily Mile that we were going to be helping to paint out - there was even a small swimming pool for the children to use, what a fab school!

Tonight we had four tasks that we were going to be lending a hand with so the group split into four even groups - each with a task force member in charge:

1. Help paint the daily mile track - Team Sarah
2. Cut back the hedges - Team Morag
3. Cut back the scrubs and tidy the flower bed - Team Sophie
4. Cut a bush into a tunnel - Team Helen

No beating around the bush

The teams quickly and efficiently got to work on their task and it wasn't long before lots of bags were filled with garden waste. Jo and Paul of Team Morag expertly solved a small lead challenge with a mixture of height and grace to allow Lewis to display his superb hedge trimming skills, while Team Helen got fully stuck in, quite literally to tame the wild bush to form a perfectly bush shaped tunnel for the children to run through.

A toy animal parade?!...be parade, be very parade!

Team Sophie got their hands stuck into the beds and removed the weeds at a weedy impressive pace until their was just soil left ready for some fresh spring bulbs, and of course the toy animal parade...

Not for the paint hearted

Team Sarah encountered a few minor mechanical machine issues which were solved by Mike, Claire's partner. With the machine working like a dream the team worked together with some on head torch duty and some on upcoming obstacle duty to mark out the daily mile track around the playground. With the finishing touches of green paint applied all that was now needed was for the painted mile track to be measured out so that Claire knew how many laps the children needed to do to complete their daily mile. Paul kindly stepped up and set his Strava and GPS watch up as he headed off on the run around the playground. The final distance measured was 130m, so the children will be running 13 laps to complete their daily mile, hopefully kick starting their #runlove, and who knows, maybe even one day in the future they'll join us on a GoodGym group run, or on a coach run...

Back to square run

With all the tasks completed and the team photo captured in front of the school entrance we headed off on the 4km run back to base in three smaller and different paced groups. In a repeat of the run down it seemed that all the traffic lights were against us, but the kilometres flew by and it wasn't long before we were all regrouped at base having a quick cool down and stretch. Cool down and stretches complete the class were dismissed to enjoy the monthly social in the Scratch Bar!

Thank you for all your hard work at the task tonight, hope you all enjoyed it. Next week the lovely Ana is back and we're heading to the Salvation Army HQ in Balham for a massive sorting task, the run will be a shorter one at 5km in total. Sign up for next week's run here. Hope you all have a fab week, see you next week on the 'runners side'!

Thank you very to the Task Force for all their help and the extra photos, and to Helen for backmarking!