Schooool's out for Summer!

We had a great turn out last night for our return visit to West End Refugee Service in the sunshine. A mixture of summery weather, the start of the holidays and a great task meant 25 of us turned out ready to head up to the West End of our brilliant city. It was so lovely to see Charlotte who had come along just to say hi to everyone as she's currently on crutches and out of action while she awaits scan results. Good luck Charlotte, we are all rooting for you!

We welcomed a few new runners to the group: Louise's son Dan who is home from uni for the Summer, and a 'new' Louise ready to smash her first every GoodGym task! Welcome to you both, we can't wait to see you again! Go and give them both a big cheer to say hello.

It was another big black and white cloaked celebration this week as awesome Task Forcer and social secretary Evan celebrated his 51st good deed, smashing 50 in the process of a double mission weekender at Pride. As well as achieving his black tshirt in just 10 months, Evan arranges a social catch up every single week for GoodGym Newcastle and provides us with the best (weirdest) photos at every run, and for all of this we salute him.

Hero !

It was a Pride-filled catch up as we shared weekend news including Andrew, Evan and Dan's amazing 4th place at the Newcastle Frontrunners relay on Friday night, and two great Community Missions where everyone got drenched on Saturday, and lots of treasures were found at Sunday's litter pick. We recapped the rules of Rock, Paper, Scissors as our warm up - who knew this was such a minefield?!- then set off to the task.

I did feel a little bad that for Dan and Louise, their first ever run with us was up a hill in 22 degrees into a headwind, but it was obvious they were made of strong stuff. We chatted about our favourite holiday destinations and before we knew it we were at West End Refugee Service.

This great service is tucked away in the West End of Newcastle, quite close to Nunsmoor Park for those who are familiar with our regular monthly mission. We were met by Sean and Hannah who talked us through the great services offered by WERS to support refugees living in our community, and set our list of tasks for the night. This time we were tasked with:

• Chopping back a hedge

• Sorting through cutlery and making them into sets

• General kitchen and office cleaning

• Litter picking (you wouldn't believe how fast Maddy and Miranda wanted to do this!)

• Garden tidy up and grass cutting

We had our first EVER medical incident as we think a horsefly decided to feast on new runner Louise. Louise was on hand to check her over and Kate and Emma came to her rescue to take her back to Hotel Indigo for an early finish. Louise finished the night with a swollen eye but otherwise ok, and we can't wait to welcome her back next week. Big thanks to everyone who helped, it's definitely handy having a doctor in our group!

I wish I could give you all an extra good deed.

Hannah and Sean our task owners were so pleased with everything we managed to achieve as we gave WERS a massive makeover in just 45 minutes. We posed for a few photos with our AWESOME NEW FLAG (check it out!) then headed off to the area we have started to call The Triangle for our fitness session, with Paul finding us a new sneaky and quick route there. Everyone was "IN" for the fitness session tonight, with just Paul and Tom taking a break to intervene in a road rage incident that was going on by the side of the road - never a dull moment this week, eh? We got our sprints on with a Tibata session of 20 second all-out sprints and 40 seconds recovery. There was an epic battle between Dan and Louise, while Paul showed off some amazing technique in his efforts- check out the photos!

It was a night full of buzz (ahem) and banter, and a brilliant time was had by all.

If you can't wait for our Group Run next week why not join us at one of the Community Missions taking place on Saturday at Nunsmoor Park or St Lawrence Park ?

Have a brilliant week full of running, walking and doing good things,

Anji x