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

What's the RAP ? Well we have 2 GREAT reports on our run tonight so we are off THE WALL with excitement and truly blessed in Richmond - Thank you James and Eva!

Run Report as told by Eva .....

Tonight, saw the Richmond massive go one a long ‘un and with weather like this it would be rude not to!

We welcomed another new starter to the gang tonight which continues our streak as THE South West London’s destination hotspot for running. Welcome to Egle - you did great!

We started as usual with some wacky games on the green with many a proclamation of “I’m not coordinated enough for this” (James) and “Don’t use me as a springboard for your star jumps!” (moi). All this culminated in pure carnage as we skipped our way across the green in a tango line to start our jog.

Even the A316 looked good in the warm sun as we ran around 5km to Britannia Lane in Whitton. There we met our friend Mandy who set us to task clearing out a bed in preparation for some summer veggie planting. We played tug of war with some serious roots for half an hour before surveying our work. A cracking team effort as always with lots of laughs and of course some synchronised jumping: Gotta make the most of those photo opportunities!

After another 5km (approx.) back, we’d started our week just right. Big smiles, some solid kilometres under the belt, new faces and muddy hands.

Final kudos to Jenna for making it after having her wisdom tooth out! We hope the tooth fairy rewards you in kind!

Until next week, GoodGymmers. Peace.

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Version 2 as written by James......

A perfect evening for a run and mission descended over Richmond as a neat bunch of GGers gathered around a table outside Wholefoods for Mark’s traditional Monday briefing. On the cards this week was a repeat visit to the Whitton Youth Zone, where the GG gang has been a few times, to help Mandy and co. with a work over of their garden area for those that work there and use this great community space.

Off to the Green we trotted to try out some of Mark’s bizarre new exercise routines, the highlight this time being a conga-star jump hybrid that could only have come from the Barun brain. It was a lighter than usual warm-up though as we had a longer-than-usual run ahead of us, so we headed off down to the river and up onto the A316 to make our way Whitton-wards. Not the most beautiful of runs but a good one to stretch the legs, and the balmy evening made it a lot more pleasant.

The last time we were at Whitton Youth Zone was in mid-February, a colder evening for sure, and a lot darker too – definitely a headtorch night. So we half-expected to find a lot of work to do on the main pathway along the building, but we arrived to find it in immaculate shape as the team had done a fantastic job maintaining it. Instead, we were assigned to an overgrown raised flowerbed around the back, where a carpet of weeds had made their home.

Apart from a couple of trees and a rosebush, everything was fair game, so we tore into our task with hoes, shears and a couple of twisted forks. A few were on bagging duty and soon the weeds were falling by the wayside and the flowerbed was seeing the light of evening once more.

And then came the roots. The never-ending roots. Like a scene from a horror flick, every time we pulled up a root several more seemed to appear in its place. But we gamely fought on, fighting the good fight, “manuva”-ing roots (look him up, Mark) and landing some pretty gnarly “wood-snakes” for our efforts. A job well done by all.

The summer is well and truly coming now, so we can look forward to some more evenings like this one. A warm welcome to Egle and hope to see you back again soon.

Report written by James and .....