Wednesday 21st June 2017
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Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Yeah I know - we complain when it's too cold, and we complain when it's too hot. But with the mercury reaching 33C yesterday, and most of arriving looking like we'd had a bucket of water thrown over us, we were in for another sticky run. For once the room that we meet in, which usually feels like we could use it for a session of Bikram yoga, actually felt cooler than outside, which was a first.
We had a couple of lovely new faces to GoodGym last night. Please put your hands together for Michelle and for Remy fresh off the back of the Guernsey half, way to go! who joined us for the first time. Give them a cheer, people of GoodGym. Welcome also to the sporting greats that are intrepid Will visiting us from Hammersmith, to lovely Jo from Wandsworth and of course to new Ealing trainer Olivia who will be running every Tuesday - go and say hi to her, she's excellent!
We had a great new task tonight at Waterman's Art Centre, which is an independent charity on the banks of the river. It is a social enterprise which means that all the money it makes goes back into events for the whole community, it's mission being to bring people together through cultural participation and also offering courses for young people hoping to go into creative industries. I think we can all agree it's a pretty marvellous place. Which is why we're going to be heading down there every few weeks to help them out. Lovely stuff.
It was a 2.5k run down there, and Dave and Andy took us on a lovely little route under Kew bridge and along the towpath. It was good to have a few obstacles thrown in to keep us on our toes, and we had a some sharp hills and a couple of sets of steps to keep the run varied. Plus a few sets of squats and step ups because I'm mean.
We got to the centre in no time at all, and were taken on a little tour of the place before getting stuck into weeding the main fire exit. We filled two huge bags with weedy badness, swept up, and gave the area a tidy. Job done. To our surprise, we were kindly treated to a complimentary ticket to see something at the centre. Best task ever! Thank you Waterman's.
There is a lovely little green space overlooking the river right by the centre, and we took advantage of that to smash out a short but intense fitness session before our run home. This included alternating sprints with conditioning exercises such as planks, press ups and crunches, before moving onto an ab session and a quick game of rat or rabbit, which saw the rabbits reign supreme.
All that was left was a run back to our starting point, where we split up into two teams for those who wanted it to push it a little harder. Thanks for the ace pub/route tips Remy, and well done Michelle for doing so well on your first run after a while. Great work. We were soon back at the Town Hall, where, dripping but happy, we finished off the night with some stretches. Don't forget there is a Hounslow Whatsapp group if you'd like to kept up to date with what's going on, and we're on The Twitter too. Next week we're running to the fabulous Water and Steam museum. If you sign up here I'll bring biscuits ;)
High Five, Hounslow!
(ps Big up to Jo for being pun-tastic and coming up with this week's title!)
Hounslow
Get out in your local community to litter pick/ plog and help to keep the streets and green spaces tidy and free of litter.