14 runners ran 4km and cleaned Colchester Food Bank

Wow! What an amazing first run Goodgym Colchester!

The festivities started early, meeting in Leisure World to sign in and get plenty of photographs. We kicked off with some speeches, and Ruth who is Goodgym’s COO got the ball rolling. She told us of how really successful Goodgyms spend a lot of time together, and it's as much social as it is about getting fit and doing good.

“It’s as much social as it is about getting fit and doing good.”

Next, Councillor Annie Feltham, Portfolio Holder for Business, Leisure and Opportunities spoke about why Colchester Borough Council was so keen to support the start-up funds in Goodgym. She said what a wonderful connection it was between groups of people who volunteer, and groups of people who run; why not connect the two?

"Why not connect the two?"

Finally Goodgym Colchester Trainer Angela Isherwood (It feels a bit weird writing about myself in 3rd person, and not sure whether I should be?), did her first Group run intro speech.

We then headed outside for a warm- up, and some of the agency partners who had attended the launch even joined in, despite them not joining us for our run.

Aaron Hunter from Colchester Borough Council was there in a photography role, but he has been instrumental in helping me get this all started in quite a short amount of time. We decided to run to The Foodbank via Cowdray Avenue, so we could literally take the same route he would driving to take more photographs when we did the work.

The run there was ever so slightly longer than anticipated, as the roadworks leading to the Ipswich Road Roundabout had closed the footpath. This meant Ruth got to experience the delights of a town full of roundabouts as we had to cross Cowdray Avenue, Ipswich Road and St Andrews Avenue to get to our destination, so we got to experience the 360 view of the two roundabouts there. (Luckily we didn’t have to detour to the magic roundabout at Hythe - we’ll save that for your next visit Ruth!).

We beat Aaron to the Food Bank by about 10 minutes - gotta love traffic!

When we got to Colchester Food Bank, Jeannette, who runs the Food Bank was there waiting with Paul and Julie, two of the Foodbank volunteers. In fact, Julie has been a volunteer right from the start of Colchester Foodbank and is also a trustee. Jeannette explained how there was so much work to do running the Foodbank, taking in deliveries, weighing and packing up food parcels etc, that cleaning was really low on the priority list, and they haven’t had time to do it properly for a very long time .

There were 14 of us, so Kat took to the kitchen, Emma took to the Bathroom, Fiona and Michelle and Ian became furniture movers and vacuum cleaners, whilst Naomi cleaned the picking shelves by the front door.

Meanwhile, David, Russell, Tom, Tony, John and Steve tackled the rather large warehouse, moving crates to sweep and mop beneath them, removing the dust from under the scales, cleaning and dusting all the surfaces, and making everything sparkling.

When the men were mopping, they even put out the Cleaning in progress sign (just like them to put a sign up to show they’re doing some cleaning, eh?). Of course 5 minutes later, they broke the mop, and Aaron and I opened the door to find Russel Tom and Tony scratching their heads trying to figure out how to fix it.

How many Goodgymers does it take to fix a mop head? Answers on a postcard.

Amazingly, in 30 minutes, the whole area was cleaned, and ready. This was only my 4th GoodGym run, and I’m always amazed by the amount of work that can get done in 30 minutes. Just imagine if one person had to sweep and mop that warehouse, it could easily have taken them 3 hours to do just that.

When we finished the task, Julie said a few words expressing her heartfelt thanks. She was quite choked up, and said that her whole perception of runners had been completely changed.

Jeanette, Julie and Paul offered us some ice cold water, which was very welcome on this warm summer evening, before we went on to our fitness session.

Onwards

We took the more scenic, slightly longer and greener route back to Leisure World, all fuelled by that warm fuzzy feeling of helping others. We stopped at the outdoor gym just before getting back to Leisure World for a quick circuit session. We’d worked our legs running, so time for a bit of upper body strength - press ups, tricep dips, pull ups and squats were the name of the game, and I expect some of us are experiencing sore arms the next day.

Finally, we did a short jog back to the front of Leisure World, our cool down, before having a good stretch by the bike bins.

I have to finish this by saying a heartfelt thank you to all those involved in getting Goodgym Colchester up and running (pun completely intended). Councillor Annie Feltham and her team, for putting up the funding. Louise Willsher from Colchester Community Voluntary services, who has been so helpful in introducing me to people to help me find tasks, Matthew Wilson at Leisure World, who as well as interviewing me together with Goodgym Founder Ivo back in May, has allowed us to use Leisure World as our Start location, and Aaron Hunter, of Colchester Borough Council, who took lots of photographs on our launch run, but has really been so helpful throughout this launch period.

Next Week, we’ll be doing some Gardening at St. Peter’s Churchyard, as well as some hill training on North Hill. Make sure you sign up.