Simply the Beth!

Eighteen runners joined together once again for an evening of GoodGym fun, however this week was particularly special as we celebrated the one year anniversary of having Trainer Beth as our fabulous run leader! We began with a quick round up of news and then the well-executed birthday celebrations began with Beth being presented with her special ‘1 today’ birthday badge, this prompted some quizzical looks from members of the public but Beth wore it with pride throughout!

Ball good things!

Birthday badge on, we walked round the corner for a quick warm up which was a little different from the usual routine. To help with the post Wimbledon blues our warm up involved some coloured tennis balls 🎾🎾 to inflict some sneaky fitness before we set off on our run. Depending on your tactical approach, the aim of the game was to side step the runners with the tennis balls and avoid either the 5 squats or jumping jacks that came along with them. Sapphire conveniently managed to escape all squats (Beth has made a note of this for next week) whilst others did more than their fair share. After a quick run around we completed a few dynamic stretches and did a quick name and number and we were ready to set off to this evening’s task!

Pallets are crate!

Tonight we were heading up to the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden to help them get ready for their Health and Wellbeing Event on Sunday. The garden is part of the Nubian Life Centre, which provides adult day care services for the Afro-Caribbean community with health issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer's. The 2.5k run up to the garden was a hot one so we were grateful to be greeted by Susannah who kindly welcomed us with some water and a friendly face. As we recovered from the run she explained the variety of gardening tasks for this evening, these included weeding, washing, sweeping, and lifting. There was also some stones that needed to be moved and arranged to neaten up the edging of the flower beds, some hanging baskets to be re-planted and some pallets that needed lifting into Susannah's car - lots to keep us busy!

Susannah supplied us with gardening gloves and a range of tools including the great and super effective pointy brush weeding tools (their technical name!) that get the tiny weeds between the cracks - having these meant we could easily ‘weed between the lines’. Thirty minutes later the garden was transformed, spruced up and weed free, ready for Sunday’s Event. As we gathered round the tree for a GoodGym photo, Susannah shared her thanks and explained that the work we did in one evening would have taken her a whole two days to complete on her own - another job well done!

We said goodbye to Susannah and set off back to base for a quick cool down. Stretches complete, it was time for the social and more birthday surprises to begin! To celebrate both Beth’s Trainerversary and Lucy’s birthday on Thursday, Catherine made some fabulous Vegan Lemon Cake and Gluten Free Brownies, Lucy had also made some tasty Blondies to share with everyone - a great reward after running! With everyone nicely filled up with cake we then headed off to the social for MORE FOOD! Some would say desert first is an unusual way to begin a meal but it worked for us and set us up nicely for this month’s social at Wagamamas for some tasty noodles and curry 🍜 (other restaurants are available)!

Another fab run and Happy Trainerversary Beth!

Top work Team!

Thank you all SO MUCH for my wonderful card, badge and cake...what a sneaky bunch of schemers you all are! ❤️ It's been an absolute pleasure leading you this past year, though I can't actually believe it's been a year! As they say "time flies when you're having fun!" Here's to more doing good, running and fun with you all!

And thank you to Amy for writing this week's run report. Just a quick reminder of this week's news....

1. London City Relays - On Friday 19th July - Mr Jonny Knight is running a stage at 10.05pm. To join him, click here.
2. Morden Hall 10K - Sunday 28th July - the monthly FREE trail run. Click here for all the details.

Next week we're heading up to Askham Court to help out the residents with some gardening work. Sign up here. Have a lovely rest of your week and weekend - see some of you bright and early on Sunday at the Asics 10K water station. Thank you again for a fabulous year! See you next week!