Saturday 18th January 2020
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Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Great to see new faces and some familiar ones too at the Wandsworth starter session today! Well done on making it out in some seriously chilly conditions to get fit by doing good.
If it was your first time, welcome to GoodGym. It's a great way to add purpose to your run, support the local community, get to other people who live in the area, and have a good time while getting your workout in.
We do this in four main ways:
Group runs which happen every Monday night from the BAC (apart from this coming Monday, when we will meet here at 6:45 ready to leave at 7pm. You can find all the details of the next run here. Hope to see you then!
Missions - one off runs to an elderly and isolated person's house to help out with a job they can't manage themselves. We move in hospital beds, mow lawns, change lightbulbs, and put up furniture. Every job makes the life of the person you're helping so much better! Check out the upcoming missions here to see what's going on and get yourself DBS checked.
Coach runs. This is a brilliant way to combat loneliness in the elderly. We pair you up with an older person who may not see anybody else from day to day. You visit them weekly for a chat - not only is it a wonderful thing to do for somebody who is lonely, but you get an incentive to head out there for your run and you could form a pretty great friendship in the process. That's why they're called your coach!
Finally we have community mission, where a group meets up to do a task to support a local community organisation. For these you don't need to be DBS checked, everybody is welcome, and you don't even have to run there (although it adds to the fun if you do!). You can see all the community missions happening here.
16 of us met today at an estate in Battersea to lend a hand to the Kambala Cares organisation - a group set up to support the local people living in the area. Well done to those who had already managed a parkrun immediately before - very impressive! After a quick briefing we handed out the litter pickers and gloves, and spread out over the area to do a massive litter blitz. Bags were quickly filled up with bottles, plastic, takeaway containers and other nasties. We got some lovely comments along the way from a couple of local residents who were really happy to see the estate getting a good clean up.
After 10 bags of litter collected, we decided to call time on the session. We took a group pic, and then headed over to a green space in the sun (finally!) to do some fitness. We started off with a circuits session - dividing up into groups to do lunges, squats, jumping jacks and one legged squats while one pair acted as our 'clock' to time each station. We then managed to fit in a quick game of chase the hair, with Diego as our speedy target!
Some stretches and cool down saw the session come to an end. Great work everybody - you did a brilliant job collecting litter and got a little fitness taster session in too!
It was lovely to see you all, and don't forget, if you have any questions or fitness goals, come and speak to me. Hope to see as many of you as possible on Monday - until then, run happy and welcome to GoodGym!
Battersea Residents association
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