GoodGym Ealing were feeling the festive love last night as 11 of us ran to help St. Mary's Church get ready for their Christmas services!

We started by warming up and discussing all the news and great things happening in Ealing at the moment. Alongside out usual Tuesday group run there's lots weekend tasks coming up too, we have community missions galore at the moment and a couple of great starter sessions on Saturdays in January too! We also congratulated Mollie and Michael on their performances at the Osterley Park 10km last Saturday, both getting PB's for the distance, well done!

After a whip around of all our favourite Christmas foods we'd built up an appetite and were ready to run and do some good for the evening, so off we went on our short run down to the church!

Deck the halls!

We were met by Vicar Steve and Angela from the church who had a few tasks for us to get them in tip top shape for the upcoming festivities. There was a Christmas tree to get up and decorated, bibles to be stacked, music kit to be packed away and a lot of dusting in the upper pews to get done.

Local churches rely almost solely on volunteers and are important community spaces, especially over the winter and festive period when lots of them are used as shelters and spaces where those without a home can come and feel safe and warm. They also get lots of extra visitors in general over the festive period so we are very happy to provide some extra hands to help them get on top of tasks that might otherwise struggle to get done!

A symbol of good!

Marline, Alex and Lauriane took on the most festive task of the evening by tackling the tree while a few of us started with stacking away the bibles. As a band member, Jenni is a dab hand at packing up musical equipment so with Larissa and Chris's help they packed up the kit, symbols and all, to make more space over the busy Christmas period.

Done and dusted!

After all that good is was time to get our hands dirty and give the upper pews a good clean and polish ready for the upcoming services. With lots of extra attendance over this period it's one of the only times this section of the church gets used so it was in need of a little TLC, GoodGym to the rescue! As a team we hoovered and dusted away, making this a welcoming and clean space for all those coming over Christmas!

Leaving the church sparkling clean we weren't done for the night just yet and we finished up with a 12 days of Christmas themed workout, for those of you at home feeling inspired to try it here it is in all it's glory:

• 1 minute wall sit
• 2 sprints
• 3 tuck jumps
• 4 jumping lunges
• 5 star jumps
• 6 high knees
• 7 sumo squats
• 8 curtesy lunges
• 9 jump squats
• 10 pulsing squats
• 11 mountain climbers
• 12 butt kickers

A jog back and nice stretch we all went home with a warm glow on this cold December night!