450 leaflets distributed and 6km run by 22 GoodGym'ers? I don't be-leaf it!

On what threatened to be a wet and miserable evening, a lovely mild and dry (thankfully!) evening greeting us in H&F. An amazing 21 GoodGym'ers joined me tonight to run and spread the word about some wonderful local charities.

Baptism of flyer

Tonight it was lovely to welcome along Lauren and Tatjana to their first H&F group run, thank you both for coming along and lending some extra hands tonight, hope you enjoyed it! And thank you as always to my wonderful regulars 😊.

Today’s task was the distribution of leaflets for Open Age UK H&F, posters for Food2You and some postcards for Age UK H&F around the streets of Hammersmith. So what do all these local charities do and provide I hear you ask?...

• Open Age H&F provide hundreds of weekly activities for local residents aged 50+ to sustain their physical and mental fitness, maintain an active lifestyle and develop new and stimulating interests.
• Food2You, a grocery delivery service run by Age UK for vulnerable, isolated older people who can't do their own shopping. It will be up and running in Hammersmith & Fulham very soon and they are currently looking for volunteers to drive the delivery vans and assist with co-ordination.
• Age UK H&F offer services for the over 50s, these range from home cooked meals to physical activity classes to IT classes, led by the man himself, Johnny Wren. Part of the programme Johnny is heading up is getting those in the community more IT literate, and one side of the postcard promoted this service. The other side was a call for more volunteers.

Flyer flyer pants on flyer!

Following a pulse-raising warm-up and a quick-fire number game we set off towards Shepherd’s Bush and White City, weaving in and around pedestrians and puddles (some were more successful than others at the latter!) and regrouped at Shepherd's Bush Green.

Before continuing on, we smashed out tonight’s fitness session of “When I went to GoodGym H&F...”. This was based on the school game, except with exercises. Everyone was challenged to both remember and do all the previous exercises, and add in an additional exercise and repetition.

We called it a day when we reached Sarah at number 14 and had the following list: 1 squat, 2 twists, 3 lunges, 4 knee raises, 5 jumping jacks, 6 jumps, 7 ‘funky chickens’, 8 punches, 9 left-leg hops, 10 right-leg hops, 11 spotty dogs, 12 star jumps, 13 press-ups and 14 windmills. Cake and biscuits was also mentioned, but sadly today no-where to be seen (until next week...).

Which, by my calculations worked out as a grand total of: 14 squats, 26 twists, 36 lunges, 44 knee raises, 50 jumping jacks, 54 jumps, 56 ‘funky chickens’, 56 punches, 54 left-leg hops, 50 right-leg hops, 44 spotty dogs, 36 star jumps, 26 press-ups and 14 windmills. Phew! Great work team, 14 exercises and a whopping 560 repetitions done in total 🙌🏼. There was also the bonus of “We went to GoodGym H&F and got some ‘motivational’ heckles from some kids on bikes!” 🗣🚲 as captured and captioned by Lucy on the ‘gram! @goodgym_hf for those not yet following.

Make like a tree...and leaf-let

Fitness completed we continued on our run. We reached Shepherd’s Bush Road and headed down one of the adjoining side streets. The team split into two and implemented the efficient 'flyer chain' down all the streets with perfection. With some helpful local knowledge from Lauren about a cut-through the large pile of leaflet quickly began to diminish and after 40 minutes of leafleting door-to-door the team had covered a substantial amount of the surrounding side streets.

Realising that we had yet to get a team photo with our leaflets, in a case of déjà vu from last week we headed towards the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. Once outside we inspected the level of leaf fall over the past week and grouped together for some team photos, and under direction from team photographer, Mo, we struck a fabulous ‘flexed’ pose 💪🏼. In the words of Mo, “that’s lovely that!”

Time flyers when you're having fun!

With time flying (as it always does!) we began our run back to base armed with one Food2You poster each. The challenge was to get the poster displayed in a shop, supermarket or local convenience store. In a classic case of speaking too soon about it being an early Christmas miracle that no-one had been lost, as we reached Shepherd's Bush Green again we realised that we were 3 GoodGym'ers short! Thankfully the yellow viz of Johnny was soon spotted running with Rosie and Tatty!

With a handful of Food2You posters successfully delivered and displayed, and most importantly, everyone present and correct, we all headed off on our short run back to base for a stretch off and then back home. Another good deed done! Thank you for all your hard work and efforts tonight team...560 exercise repetitions and around 450 leaflets delivered, boom!

Shoutouts 📣

• A big well done to Matt who got not one but TWO PBs at the weekend!! 🥳🙌🏼.
• Well done to Alice and 'Speedy Jonzales', Jonny Knight for completing the Spartan Stadion Race at Twickenham! 🙌
• Thank you to all my backmarkers, and to Mo for his fantastic camera work as always 📸.
  

News 📰

1. H&F Community Mission - Age UK H&F's Christmas party is on Thursday 12th December. Please sign up here if you can lend a hand anytime between 4pm-8.30pm.
2. Other local Community Missions - Tree planting in Chiswick on Saturday 30th November, all the details are here.
3. Santa Dash 🎅- Sunday 8th December at Brockwell Park. Run a 5k or 10k dressed as Santa! All the details are here - Andrew has kindly created a team called 'GoodGym H&F'.
4. GG-all areas Christmas party 🎅🎄⛄🎉 - Friday 6th December. Places are limited so make sure you sign up! All the details are here.

Next week, we’ll be spreading some Christmas cheer as we will be delivering some Christmas Cards for H&F Foodbank around Fulham. Please sign up here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!