After weeks and weeks of scorchio last night saw the weather break and a bit of rain happened. This was somewhat ironic as one of our tasks was helping our pals on Clapham Common to water the wildflower meadow that we planted in the spring. After a serious amount of back and forth with watering cans, the heavens opened last night and the lovely pitter patter of refreshing H20 could be heard falling from the sky. OH WELL.

Before all that though, we welcomed back Vicki - HI VICKI - who is visiting from Oz for a bit and it was lovely to have her back. We also celebrated the brilliant Emma and Jim, who earned their 50 and 100 t-shirts respectively. WELL DONE GUYS!

After a quick warm up we split into two groups. Jim and Beth led one group about 1.5km to Larkhall park:

11 of us took a leisurely jog over to Larkhall Park to meet Carl. He had a lot of weeds that needed pulling up and was grateful that we would have them out before the rain came and they would be reinvigorated and take over even more. We split into two groups - Team Weed and Team Thistle. There were noticeably different approaches in the two groups, Team Weed went with a ‘bend at the hip, bums in the air’ vibe while Team Thistle crouched down and really got on the same level as their targets. After half an hour or so the area was looking much better and we set off on an even more leisurely jog back to Papa’s.

The rest of us headed to the aforementioned Clapham Common to do some solid watering. The plants were so dry that we certainly did some good and the rain that came later can only help the lovely plants on their way to perennial glory.

Nice work GoodGym!

It was another lovely summer's evening and we welcomed Saul, trainer for soon to be opening Huddersfield, along for his first ever GoodGym run! As the last Tuesday in July, it was time to award our Shit Prize of the Month to another deserving winner. This month it went to Mark, who bagged himself a 10km PB in the stonking heat at the British 10km and for making such a great contribution at the Shindig earlier in the month. WELL DONE MARK!

JKB led one group across to Myatt's Field, where they set about unwinding some pesky bindweed around the nature garden. Once a satisfying pile of the pesky weed was accumulated, they did some paired running around the circular park path. Once you meet each other, you high five, turn around and run back the way you came. If you're both keeping a steady pace, both runners should arrive back at the same time.

Katie led the second group up to the lovely Ruskin Community garden. Justin was very delighted that we were all there and we set about clearing two beds from weeds and turning the soil as well as spreading some compost on another bed. We also learned the difference between a mattock and a hoe - which was very exciting. After that we did a pyramid hill session before heading back to base.

When all the runners were back from doing so much good, we celebrated GoodGym's 100,000th good deed with a banner and some photos. Well done Lambeth - you have made such a big contribution to this number and long may it continue!

You'd never have guessed the football and tennis were over because we had a MEGA group this week of 37 excellent people. Hooray!

That's good as we had two tasks to be getting on with.

The first group headed up to the Portico Gallery - 4km there and a longer run on the way back through the lovely park. Tom Benson tells us everything!:

We did a crack job of washing down a load of walls with sugar soap. John claimed it's one of the most underrated things and if he were Prime Minster he would make sure it got the recognition it deserved and also to bin Boris as well.

Sugar soap is one of the most underrated things! Said John

In 20 mins we had stripped the room and hallway and lathered the walls in some lovely sugar soap ready for the painting to begin. As always John was on good form and thanked us kindly. As we done good we took the scenic route home by taking a detour in London's finest park, Brockwell and then came back for some good stretches.

The second group headed through the park both ways to the magical South London Botanical Institute. This tiny oasis of botanical wonder is hidden near Tulse Hill. They have recently had some renovation work done and had moved all of their boxes of old pressed flowers and seeds upstairs. Our job was to form a human GoodGym chain and bring them back down again. Once complete, we had a look around the garden, which features poisonous plants, plants used for dye and all kinds of other wonders. We also looked at some of the dried flowers, which were collected 100 years ago! They have a lovely programme of events and it is certainly worth checking them out.

After some planks and lunges in the park, we did some stretches and then went to the pub for a well earned pint.