Last night, it was a full female force, (well except for Mark of course) and we were ready for a Monday night of chatty running and doing good!

We started the evening with a big welcome to new runner Sarah and a welcome back to Katie and Egle on their second run. It was also great to see Tonje on her third run and Victoria an original GG Richmond runner who had been away for a while.

The big news was to wish all of those from GG Richmond taking part in the Vitality 10k on Monday 28th May - Victoria, Holly, Imogen and anyone else running…good luck!

So, back to it, we headed to Richmond Green for a warm up, a very energetic warm up as always that saw us running from cone to cone trying to remember 1 to 4 and where we needed to press up and where we needed to donkey kick!?

Running into the new week like......#goodgym #mondays #richmond #running #fitness #warmup #exercise #technique #drills #sprint #drive #fun pic.twitter.com/HAqQE6Y4of

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) May 21, 2019

After a little confusion and lots of giggles we mastered it and celebrated with star jump (see photo) and then hit start on Strava and headed out over Richmond bridge and to the river, taking on the start of a figure of eight route on our journey to Lynde House Care Home.

Lynde House Care Home provide high quality nursing care, palliative care and care for people with sensory disabilities. It is a beautiful home with a lovely garden. We headed out to the garden for our task for the evening – we had been asked to paint benches. We grabbed sand paper, paint and brushes and got to work.

It was definitely “women’s work” as we put our muscles into it and opened the paint tins with pure brute force (well done Lenka) and scrubbed those benches that we wore down the few bits of sand paper we had. We then carefully painted each bench and some of us even watered the garden when there weren’t enough brushes - and we did all this while still chatting!!!

With just minutes to spare there was one bench left, so we grouped together to achieve a PB - the most amount of people to paint a bench at the same time as well as getting it done in such speedy time. Those without brushes were helping keep the team motived by giving them words of encouragement and swapping in when their arms got tired.

It really was a “PB on a PB” (personal best on a painted bench).

How many Goodgymers does it take to paint a bench?! #volunteering #richmond #carehome #painting #outdoors #doinggood #fun #goodgym pic.twitter.com/Zs05Mjufg6

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) May 21, 2019

Time was up and before we new it we were heading back to Wholefoods on the remainder of our figure of eight route, heading over Twickenham bridge and back onto the green before a cool down to round us off.

It really was a injection of girl power last night to get the task done! Well done everyone