23 GoodGym'ers ran 3km to pave the way for a perfectly weeded path

It's a Tuesday, it's GoodGym H&F day! Definitely my favourite evening of the week.

It was lovely to welcome along Xiaolei for her first GoodGym run, and great to see Lucy sporting her new red GoodGym tee!

Stacks of news...

Before I launched into this week's news we heard about all the great racing from the weekend - from the hills of Ealing to the hot and undulating motorway (which was closed!) of Sofia. Excellent running by all, and a special shoutout to Sarah who came 4th woman in the 10km 🙌🏼.

1. May London Long Run - this Saturday, led by GoodGym Lamber Trainer, Mark around a number of South London parks (10km & 19km run options available), for all the details, click here.
2. Fulham Palace parkrun GoodGym takeover - Saturday 29th June! - I think you may all have heard, but...GoodGym will be helping out with a BIG takeover event & need some volunteers and pacers! - Sign up here & please fill out the spreadsheet on the sign up page with your preferred volunteer role or pacing time. Join the WhatsApp group here.
3. GoodGym Olympics 2019 - represent H&F on Saturday 3rd August in events from the Egg & Spoon to 5000m! Sign up here. The GoodGym Olympics anthem entries are now open and entry for the events will happen at the start of June.
4. GoodGym West Summer Party & Two Tunnels - On the weekend of 18th August it's one of the 'Big 6' GoodGym races - there will be a group of us heading down to Bath to camp and race. If you'd like to get involved in an H&F relay team, let Bex or Catriona know! For all the details, click here.

AND, a big well done to Bex who completed her 50th good deed!! 🖤🥳

As tonight's task was only a short 1.2km run away we had a quick warm-up before we set off towards Loris Community Garden for Hammersmith Community Gardens Association (HCGA), pausing as always for the much loved weekly wall sit.

Once we arrived we were greeted by the ever mysterious, 'Mr Abs on Tour', Chi who took some fantastic photos and then seemingly vanished!

A runderfully weedy path

The team were also faced with one very weedy path! One that they would be tackling tonight. With the padlock combination finally cracked, the gardening gloves, tools and bags were retrieved from the shed area.

Paving face

Armed with tools, everyone spread themselves around the deceptively long garden path and got to work removing the weeds and their roots from the path's cracks.

Katie, from the HCGA had also left us a chalkboard of tasks and a big thank you, however, this was only spotted by the eagle eyed Catriona at the end of task! Whoops! Luckily, we'd started with the weeding of the path as she had kindly requested.

Getting to the brick of it!

With piles of weeds appearing besides the paths, you could see the path's brick work slowly being uncovered to its former glory.

And wow! What a transformation there was in just 40 minutes. The path that when we arrived was overrun with thick weeds growing through the cracks was now looking freshly layed. With one last patch quickly weeded, everyone had to be dragged away as we called it a night. Fear not, as next month we'll be back to finish the job!

After much debate about where to take the group photo, we settled on around the path with the Banksy-esk graffiti wall art in the background...slightly less risky than everyone gathered around the pond with the ducks!

Planks a lot!

On our way back to base we had a quick stop off at Brook Green for a closely contested team plank-sprint off and some 'Z' shaped agility work before continuing on our way.

Gluten-THREE cakes!

Safely back at base with the cool down and stretching complete there was only one thing left do...celebrate Bex's 50th with not one, but THREE delicious homemade gluten-free cakes - I think everyone is hoping the GoodGym H&F cookbook with free samples will be available soon! What incredible bakers we have, a big thank you to Johnny, Catherine and Andrew for all their baked treats 👌🏼.

With cake in tow we headed to The Blue Anchor for our monthly social: cake, drinks and friendly company, what a perfect end the evening!

Next week's we're heading back to Springvale Residents Hall to help finish the weeding in their garden area and tidy-up around the front of the hall ready for the elections! Please sign up here. See you then, have a fab week! And good luck to those that are running the Hackney Half on Sunday!

If anyone can spare some a few pennies, the HCGA would love to replace the dilapidated glasshouses in Ravenscourt Park with new, more functional glasshouses . If they get lots of people pledging in the first few weeks to their crowdfunding campaign the mayor may give them £50k! The link if you'd like to make a pledge is here.