What a lovely sunny evening for a run up to the beautiful Locke Park. An evening made all the more lovely courtesy of Raleigh, GoodGym's new partner, who provided us with special treats- a card containing two speciality chocolates and an exclusive offer of 10% off at www.raleigh.co.uk for GoodGym members in attendance on launch night. The varieties of chocolate on offer tonight were dark almond sea salt (51% cocoa), dark (71% cocoa), white raspberry popping candy, white and milk hazlenut. We like our new sponsor already!

Up at the park we were met at the storage locker by Anne and Zak. The jobs in store for us tonight included raking leaves from the bank sides beneath the trees down to the bottom of the slope, then scooping them up and putting them into rubble sacks for later collection by the gardener. The sacks can only be filled to a certain weight or he won't take them away. the rule of thumb was to fill them to about three quarters fullbut this was dependant on the wetness of of the leaves in each bag, and the size of the bag too.

There were various methods employed to get the leaves from the ground into the waiting bags. A piece of board held in each hand to grab up the leaves, two hand shovels used in a similar fashion, a rake and spade combo, and the classic hands only approach. Daniel focused on raking the leaves down from the top of the bank, Kirsty was also on raking duty (though at lower altitudes), Anne was bagging, sweeping and generally doing everything, and James was using the two boards to scoop up oodles of leaves and also organize the rubble bags. Meanwhile, Zak was guarding the trolley with all of the equipment in. Working as a team we managed to fill 6 and a half huge bags full of leaves. With all available bags filled we dragged them into a line for the gardener to collect and also for a good photo op.

After all of the bag and leaf excitement we said goodbye to Anne and Zak for another month and headed in search of the movable exercise equipment. When we had all located the equipment (after first heading in different directions) we heard what the fitness session would entail. Everyone was to choose a piece of starting equipment and we would do 45 seconds of full exertion exercise on that piece before having a short break to move onto the next piece. This was repeated until everyone had completed a high energy exercise on each piece. James set a timer for 45 seconds on his phone which was started once everyone was in position on their machine. Everyone put in a stellar effort on every one, and before we knew it we had achieved a full body workout having utilized all 8 machines.

All that was left to do after the super effort put in on the machines by everyone was to finish the run and stretch off.

Super job, as always, tonight everyone!