Newham, New Year, New Blue walls at the Durning Hall Community Centre in Forest Gate.

A newcomer for the New Year this week: Martin was brought along by Diana who has attended a couple of Newham runs before. Both were very keen and smiley (but they want to run more miles. More Miles!) We also had Vickie who had decided to get stuck in again after a few months away and a visit from seasoned GoodGym tourists Andrew from Tower Hamlets and Kathryn from Hackney.

Making up the team were Newham regulars Alice and Carol, and Simon - the new Islington trainer - filling in for Kirsty who was away this week.

So, off we set to the Durning Hall Community Centre to carry on with the painting task started before Christmas. The absence of Kirsty's local knowledge and an over-reliance on technology meant the 3.5k journey gained a little (but didn't we all after Christmas?) Carol and Alice saved the day by pointing out we were getting a bit close to Hackney!

We did finally manage to arrive and after donning some latex gloves quickly got stuck in to the work with masking taping and dustsheeting and rolling and cutting in and climbing up some very high ladders. There was even a bit of Mozart played at one point (we hear music is popular in Brent these days and basically stole the idea).

The scenic journey to the task meant we had arrived a little later than planned, but in classic GoodGym spirit everybody was more than happy to get back a little later than usual so we managed to spend a good 30 minutes making the walls that little bit bluer and that little bit newer.

On the way back we briefly discussed how pendulums work and how to use our arms when running fast and then put it all into practice with a game of "secret surges", which basically involved one person at a time trying run away from the rest of the group and not letting them catch up. The element of surprise was key and a couple of those who claimed not to be able to run very fast definitely managed to put a few metres between themselves and the rest of the group, showing that you can't completely trust the folk in Newham ;-)

As a final push for the evening we used our arms to drive ourselves up the stairs at Westfield shopping centre before jogging back to the Aquatics centre for a nice stretch.

A great job tonight from all and the perfect start to the New Year for Newham.

Simon