On a bright, chilly morning, eight eager runners helped to keep the Secret Garden looking lovely, covering 1km of running and drills.

How wonderful to be out in the fresh air to start our year as we mean to go on! A very big welcome to our newcomers, Rachel, Lizzy and Mary and welcome back and a Happy New Year to Clare, Darryl, Stephen and Oli!

Thank you also to Oli for our rather delightful title pun (and others in this report), we will be in the running for International Pun of the Month, surely?!

As this was a starter session, we did things a bit differently, meeting outside the Information Centre in Crystal Palace Park instead of our usual Bridge House. Well done to Clare, Stephen, Oli and Darryl, who ran Crystal Palace parkrun before meeting us, what a great start to the day! We did our introductions then I cracked open the container to gather tools. At this point Penny appeared, with a rather fancy trolley for us to use, so we piled everything in and trundled over to the Secret Garden. Here Penny told us about the various groups that use this space and we admired the lovely new community orchard that has popped up since our last visit - we will enjoy seeing this grow over time.

Top Secret: For Your (Mince P)ies only!

Once in the garden, we took our pick from the various tools and jobs on offer, with some grabbing rakes and clearing paths, some getting to work with loppers and shears and others tending to the raised beds. As we worked we were watched closely by a beautiful and very friendly robin, waiting patiently for any grubs and worms that we might unearth.

Time passed quickly and we were soon scooping up the last of the leaves, putting away the tools and gathering to warm up for our fitness session. It's always fun to get playful with our warm-up and even better to be able to see each other at this time of year! We did become the focus of attention for a very playful dog though, not so great! Today's session was looking at form, so we performed some drills to encourage high knees and to drive our arms, before we ran as a group around a 1km loop, picking up the pace on my signal - otherwise known as 'fartlek' (stop giggling a the back!).

As we finished our loop, I introduced a little game to embed the idea of driving our arms backwards, encouraging our upper bodies to be more still and our arms to do more work. To test this, we took to the hill, where I saw some really strong work from everyone - now just remember to switch this on next time your body tires and you start to lose form.

Tea-for-new (GoodGymers)

After a little stretch we went into the office, where Penny had very kindly left mince pies and Christmas cake for us to have with a hot drink - thank you, it was just what we needed! On Tuesday we will have our first Tuesday group run of 2019, when we will run up to the Upper Norwood Library Hub for some painting and general tidying - sign up here.

See you soon!