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.

Another lovely sunny June evening and - as the last Tuesday of the month - the evening kicked off with the Shit Prize of the Month (SPOTM) award. This month Lavinia was awarded the coveted prize, which this month consisted of a Sky reusable mug with the phrase "Plastic is not fantastic." Not only does Lavinia now possess a truly unique and remarkable mug that will be the envy of all her friends, she can also save 50p when ordering a hot beverage from many popular coffee outlets across the length of Britain. CONGRATS!

The whole group headed 1.5km to Myatt's Field park. We met Helen, who is the park manager. She had lots of jobs for us and we started off with a nice history lesson. It turns out this lovely Victorian park was designed by Fanny Wilkinson - yes that's right, THE Fanny Wilkinson, one of the first professional women landscape gardeners and an active campaigner for women’s suffrage - you know the one. Hooray.

How great that a Victorian lady designed this park! Said everyone.

Helen was very organised and had A LIST, which we all deeply approved of. She split the group into 4. Group 1 went to disentangle some very tangly bindweed from some lovely lavender plants.

This is the best smelling task I have ever done! Said Tess, as she stood amidst the lavender.

Group 2 had lots of mops and buckets and wipey things and they cleaned a beautiful Victorian glass house from top to bottom. Group 3 pruned some roses that were quite dead and didn't have any leaves left on them and did some weeding.

I think you mean PETALS! Said Lucy.

Yes we did mean petals - and for all your other gardening needs, just ask Lucy. Group 4 took to the park armed with litter pickers and bags and did a huge clean up. Sadly in the summer months many people choose to enjoy the free space of the park but leave it in a right old mess after. Great work to the team for sorting it out but really, come on people, tidy up after yourselves!

After this we all took part in the GoodGym Olympics 1km challenge. JKB designed a pattern within the park and the rest did a speedy lap around the outside. There was some really good running and impressive times. Well done everyone. And with that it was back to Papa's for stretches then home.

Sometimes the tasks we have at GoodGym, while always helpful to local community organisations, are less strenuous, and sometimes we get tasks which get our heart rates up and working those muscles. Last night was definitely the latter, with not one but two different jobs that required some serious GoodGym power.

But first we welcomed some lovely new runners to the group - everybody please give a big cheer for Holly and Polly who joined us for their very first group run last night!

After a few quick hellos it was off to the basketball court to do our warm up, which featured some manic whistleblowing, side steps, heel flicks and power skipping. With our heart rate up, there was just time for a headcount and a roundup of all the nice things that had happened to us in the last week. There had been some international travel, some personal milestones and more than one good ice cream eaten - what a happy few days!

With Katie feeling poorly (get well soon Katie!) it was George leading the group on a longer run to Clapham Common. This lovely 2.5k run each way has been a regular feature of Lambeth's group runs this summer, and what a brilliant job you've been doing helping to create a wildflower meadow in this lovely space. Last night was no exception, with the crew giving the place a good water and digging over, and also getting a massively good work out at the same time thanks to some hard ground! Sadly this was our final run to the common for this job, but the task owners said that the work you guys have been doing was 'instrumental' in the project.

"They did a little thank you speech for us at the end because we've been involved throughout and provided so much man power" said Alice

Nice work team!

Meanwhile, the second group had set off on a shorter run to the Grove Adventure Playground near Loughborough Junction for a number of jobs at this epically fun spot - which much to our delight featured a climbing wall and adventure playground. Sadly, this space is threatened with closure by the council, but a group of volunteers have taken on the task of tidying up the place so it can be used again for supervised play by kids who don't have access to safe outside space. What a brilliant initiative.

With Freya tackling the huuuge mowing job, there were also a massive pile of branches to saw up, and an even more massive pile of wood chip to spread at the base of the slide. It was action stations almost immediately and half an hour later the place was looking a lot more friendly. Check out the before and after shots! There was even a few minutes left for a little go on the colourful climbing wall.

After a speedy run back with only a tiny diversion (whoops) we got back to the basketball court and the two groups were reunited (...and it felt so good). We just had time to squeeze in a little tabata (TAbata? TaBATa? who knows) before calling it a night. The idea of this session is that you raise your heart rate high enough that you continue to burn calories after you've stopped exercising, while increasing your aerobic endurance levels at the same time. Suffice to say it's a tough work out, but innumerable frog jumps, power squats, plank jumps, burpees and high knees later, we were done. Well done gang.

Next week the lovely John Hunter will be leading you on what promises to be an ace group run to help out the bees before lovely Katie is back from her travels the week after. Thanks for having me Lambeth, it was great to see you!