19 runners ran 5km to help the YMCA Cardiff clear their warehouse

To me, to you, to me, to you… If there was ever a chucklevision task – THIS WAS IT!!

We saw quite a few new faces at GoodGym Cardiff this week, so, in the voice of Mrs Doubtfire, Helllooooo to Ellen, Lowri, Hannah, Esther and Shaun – SO great to have you run with us, and welcome to GoodGym Cardiff :D . We also had Debs from GoodGym Bristol join us – Welcome Debs!

To begin, Ben led us through some quick warm up drills in order to get our bodies primed ready to run! Some dynamic stretching and warm up games are essential ingredients for a GoodGym group run. During the warm up, Ben (the GoodGym Cardiff trainer), spoke about the 3 ways runners can get involved with GoodGym (1) Coach runs (2) Run Missions (3) Group runs. Some of us forgot to bring our documents which we need to bring with us in order to get DBS checked for the missions and group runs… “Doh!”… Ben reassured us that this was okay and that we could bring them next week! - We will remember next time Ben!

Let’s Go Go Go!

We then started our evening run. We ran down Queen Street, stopping at a few benches to do triceps dips (Who said seats are made for just sitting on?!). We also did some squats and calf raises whilst waiting at crossings – Safety first and good ol’ body conditioning too!

‘You’ve got one job to do’…

We arrived at the Warehouses of YMCA Cardiff where Mandy, the task organiser, explained the task which we had 30 minutes to get done; our challenge was to clear the whole of one of the Warehouses of stuff. As always, upon hearing a challenging task, our eyes lit up and ears twerked a little… challenge ACCEPTED Mandy!

We all got stuck straight in… Ben threw the gauntlet down and challenged us runners to find the most bizarre and interesting object. There were Samurai swords, a Santa Clause, Hi-Fi Systems, Vinyl’s – you name it, it was there! We also found our GoodGym Cardiff mascot called Jim (Check out the photo of Jim in the photo slideshow above – Isn’t he just awesome! Okay, I won't talk Jim too much as it’s slightly irr’ELEPHANT’). The task was so much fun and we all worked together, to me, to you, to me, to you... we moved so much stuff! Andrea found a book by Benjamin Britten (Check out the action shot of her reading it in the photos!!) and BAGPUSS!

Huge amounts of kudos has to be given to Rachel! During the task, whilst all the stuff was being moved outside of the warehouse ready to be thrown away the following day, Rachel posted about the stuff on Gumtree and within 15 minutes people started arriving at the site to collect items from the mountain of stuff! WOW Talk about rapid response! … As they say… one man's trash is another man's treasure.

TIMES UP!

Mandy, the task organiser said;

“I can’t believe how much you’ve got done!”

Mandy thanked us again and gave us a little ‘goody bag’ which included a limited edition YMCA keyring – Thank you Mandy! We then had a group photo and sing song of the Y-M-C-A, which included actions, and headed back to the meeting point. A BIG thanks to Lucy and Samina who backmarked on the evenings run!

It was an AWESOME night!...

I know what you are thinking… you want to jump in Doc Brown’s DeLorean, reach 88mph, go back in time and do it all over again! Unfortunately, that's not possible, however.... You can sign up to our next run by clicking here

----- Things to remember for next week ---

Remember runners to bring your DBS documents next week if you'd like to be paired with an isolated older person (run coach) or do run missions (one off tasks for isolated older persons.

If you have signed up to become a member then your t-shirt will be on its way to you! When it arrives, bring it along to wear on the group runs, and wear it with pride when on your coach runs and missions too :)

Remember to check out the GoodGym Cardiff Heroes Leaderboard. You can sync your Strava/Runkeeper with your GoodGym account!

Remember to share this run report on your Facebook profile :D !

See you all next week!