14 GoodGym'ers ran 3km as they went back to school to lend a helping hand

As the rain lightly came down I feared my group would have another week of being soaked, though after last week I was confident I would be met with lots of red tees and smiling faces, whatever the weather, they're one hardy bunch! As well as my fab regulars tonight, it was lovely to welcome along, Rowena for her first GoodGym run and great to welcome back Will - you're H&F now Will, less of that Hounslow chat ;-). Thank you all for coming along.

Since there was rain in the air we sheltered under the Better Gym car park for the intros and a quick round-up of the week’s news.

Just news it!

1. London-wide GoodGym social - this Thursday (7th Feb) at the The Prince Arthur Pub, near Old Street - Celebrate GoodGym, Heroes of the months, January IPOTM (International Pun of the Month), IPOTY (International Pun of the Year) and January Challenge Results! Sign up here.
   
2. Catriona has organised a Community Mission on Sunday (10th Feb) - collecting Trainers at the Olympic Park Half Marathon for Help Refugees, a wonderful charity with supports displaced people across Europe with clothes, shoes, tents, sleeping bags and other provisions. This will be followed by brunch. Sign up here.
3. JANUARY CHALLENGE 2019! - We did it! Well done to everyone at GoodGym who was part of making the January Challenge - GoodGym'ers completed over 6,000 good deeds done and ran over 80,000km - more than twice round the world! In H&F we completed 112 good deeds and ran 1,626 kms, beating BOTH of our targets. We also came top of Division D. Well done all, what a brilliant all round team effort. Onwards into February - there's still lots of good deeds to be done!

Big well done to Catriona and Jason who ran the 10km Cancer Research UK London Winter Run on Sunday, great running! No mentions of bear hugs though....

With a short warm-up and the name and number count completed we headed off on our short 1km run down to our task tonight at Flora Gardens Primary School. Upon our arrival we were met by the lovely Business Manager, Jeanette. Jeanette walked us through the outside area of her school, a massive area with ping pong tables, basketball hoops, a bandstand, lots of fun kid's activities everywhere, it was huge, what a fab place to go to school!

Water re-leaf!

Tonight we had two tasks that we were going to be lending a hand with:

• Wash the playground area
• Tidy-up all the leaves

It normally takes the school caretaker two days to wash and rid the tarmac and surrounding playground area wall of unwanted green moss, so tonight it was our challenge to lend a hand and speed up the job! The slight lack of light didn't perturb the team and once all the tools and equipment were set-up everyone got quickly stuck in to the task.

Boys and their toys!

Everyone shared the jet washing load, with Jason wonderfully guiding the machine and hose pipe into place throughout - thanks Jason! To mine and a few others’ amusement, at one point all the boys were gathered round the machine and the phrase “boys and their toys” seemed very apt!

Sprints suit us!

The last of the leaf fall was quickly cleared and bagged up from around the grassed and playground areas so while a few of the group finished off the washing of the playground area the rest of the group, Jeanette included, were kept warm with a couple of fitness-based playing card games.

The first of which was a take on the classic game snap, 'full house'. The group split into 4 groups - team diamonds, team hearts, team spades and team clubs. A deck of playing cards were laid face-down in a circle and the aim was to get the team's assigned suit set first by sprinting out to the cards and picking up a card one at a time, if the suit matched it was their's to take back, if not they had to place it back face-down.

The whole nine cards

Next up was ‘fitness by card numbers’. Each team member picked a card from the classic fan spread and had to complete the fitness exercise that it related to, a couple of favourites I heard were 3 = 3 burpees and 7 = 7 frog jumps.

With the fitness session completed we called it a night and helped Jeanette tidy and clear away all the tools and equipment. No goodbyes were said just yet though as Jeanette, a keen runner and parkrunner, and now GoodGym runner joined us on the final part of our run down through Furnival Gardens, along the towpath and back to base - with a couple of bonus forward, backward and side lunges thrown in when we regrouped.

Back at base we had a quick stretch off where we thanked Jeanette and welcomed Rowena before saying our goodbyes and heading home. Class dismissed!

Thank you for a fun night, have a great week! Next week we're off to Age UK H&F, a nice INDOOR task where we will be helping to clear and sort an art cupboard as well as helping to organise donations for a Charity shop and upcycling. Sign up for next week's run here. Rumour is there may also be some winged baked treats....