Its getting warmer! And that can only mean one thing....SHORTS! a few of us runners were sporting shorts (and short sleeves) tonight at GoodGym Kingston.

11 keen beans arrived at Guildhall with gloves, head torches and a 'do good spirit' ready to run! After our 'floating heads trick' we headed outside to warm up and enjoyed the musical accompaniment of some well behaved protesters.

After a game of 'slap the knees' to test agility and cruelty we set our Stravas and headed off into the night. Along the way we were greeted by our old friend Surbiton Hill ...she does go on a bit but we persevered to reach the top and finished our 4km out trip at the Wayside at Upper Brighton Road.

There we met Andrew from ID.Verde who looks after this Community Garden to make sure it looks healthy and is a good habitat for wildlife. We have been lucky enough to do a few visits to the Wayside and we were now able to see the results of our efforts with most of the overgrown weeds and plants removed , lots of flowers and fauna have now been able to blossom and make the garden look really great!

Tonight we were there to work on the second half of the garden by weeding and litter picking. We got to work , getting in some good squat and bicep work trying to dig out some stubborn roots.

Our efforts were rewarded as passer-bys' stopped or slowed down their cars to say thank you and that we were "doing a great job". It felt great to get some feedback from the community first hand. (And yes it was on account of our great work in the community - not the short shorts)

With minutes to spare we downed tools , collected bags and heaved everything into Andrews awaiting van, where we took out group photo looking quite pleased with what we achieved.

Such a pleasure to help the Kingston community at this lovely task, looking forward to being back there soon with such great runners and a task owner to assist!

Welcome back to Rachel and Shonese on your second run (Don't be scared either as I think that is as short as the shorts will go despite the rumors) and well done to Kate and Rob for their PB's over the weekend.

See you next week

Winter may be coming for some, but it was a warm evening in Kingston for 14 keen runners. After quickly congratulating our latest and greatest centurian, Canada Kate, with homemade 'Happy' tarts (Thanks Nicky). We were warmed even further, then broke off into our running and walking groups.

With an Angel to the rear Mark set a devilish pace up the front, keen to get to the church on time.

Arriving at St Johns Evangelist church in Surbiton, we were keenly met by Caroline the task owner, who cooled us down with non holy water and set us to work sticking the tiles down and taping up any trip hazzards.

Different techniques were tried and tested...and the final say went to the test crash car as to whether the trip hazard had been smoothed.

We carpet enough of these tiles! Unlike our last visit we were a bit more strategic this time and set a tapetastic trail to follow. Since there were a pew of us, we were able to get stuck in quickly and tape this task down. We did some top notch speed taping, getting far too excited about stripping (the back off the double sided tape!)

The final say went to the test crash car as to whether the trip hazard had been smoothed.

Our time had eventually run out, along with the duck tape so it was back to the Guildhall for cool down stretches and across the road in celebration of Canada Kate's 100th good deed.

Welcome to Maarit on her first run and well done to Jane on her second run - great to have you run with us!

What a night for it! No fair weather runners in sight...despite what we kept telling ourselves. All day we had received weather warnings but we were not to be deterred as good needed to get done!

We arrived at Guildhall dripping in anticipation of what awaited us tonight. We were very lucky to have Michelle the task owner join us especially on such a frightfully cold evening.

Michelle reminded us all about Kingston Mencap , our destination for this evening. Mencap is a registered charity which supports adults with a learning disability, and their families and carers. The wonderful work that Mencap do takes place at the Searchlight Community Centre which was about a 3km jog away for us tonight.

Before heading off we warmed up, Mark found some space under shelter so we could hide from the rain, even if only momentarily. Then we were off, trying to dodge all the puddles and keep our fingers and toes free from frost bite (I'm not sure we won that battle but we made it to Searchlight in one piece!)

Once there we donned our gardening gloves, grabbed some bin bags and got stuck in to clearing the garden of leaves. We were done in record time.....something about becoming a drowned rat makes us go faster is how we summed it up. Before we knew it we were back on the road again dreaming of hot chocolate.

The rain had now turned to snow and we felt a sense of.pride for tackling such a grim evening. As ever we brightened it up with our good deeds and were not put off by the onset of hypothermia. The office stretch helped thaw us a little too!

Welcome to Jane on her first GoodGym run and great to see Chi who visited from Haringey.

Lovely running with you all and look forward to Church next week!

It was a great turn out tonight with 18 of us gathered at the Guildhall for a super long but super informative briefing with lots of news packed in: Summary as follows

• CONGRATULATIONS 1st Nicky earned her wings! Well done on 100 good deeds Nicky!

• Sadly next week is Nic C's last run with us, a message will be going out about a drink after next week's run to say farewell and celebrate all the great runs she has had with Kingston

• We have smashed our January Challenge and are top in our division but lets keep going and see how much more we can do!!!

• There is an Unofficial unoffical Goodgym Socialisng facebook page which talks about all things Goodgym, advertises socials centrally and gives you the chance to vote for 'pun of the month' - Check it out!

Tonight we also welcomed two new runners - Di and Lorena , lovely to meet you and have you run with us and well done to Alice and Taki on her second run with Goodgym Kingston.

Although it was a super long briefing and a taxing warmup with 'What actual pressups?!' We still had some puff left to take on a scenic run to the Wayside Garden in Surbiton.

Once there we were greeted by Andrew of I.D Verde who gave us a brilliant gardening tutorial and instructions on tonights task.

We were asked to pick up all the litter, dig up all the weeds, pull down the ivy and even show some love to the other side of the road so Lovelace Road got some TLC where we took part in a therapeutic hedge trim and was claimed 'GOOD JOB Goodgym' by passers by : - )

All that was left to be done was to have two great group photos - one in the middle of the road (Beatles style) without upsetting a single driver and then a usual suspects pinned against the wall before we made a clean get away and a steady run back to make use of the stairs at Guildhall for stretching every muscle we have I think!

Great job all and looking forward to next week already - Keep logging those miles!