Wednesday 6th May had the distinction of being the first Wednesday in the month, which can only mean one thing. Yes, it was time for the GGWF monthly social and since lockdown, this auspicious occasion has taken place online and has centred around a quiz.

The emerging tradition is that the winner of the previous edition serves as Quiz Master for the next one and on this occasion, the honour fell to Waltham Forest ex-pat, Alex Hughes. Alex put together a fascinating set of questions that included a picture round of guess which species the eye belonged to and other challenging but enthralling conundrums.

It was a close run thing with a nail-biting finish but eventually, Pippa pipped Kevin at the post to come out on top with 149 points. Kevin was runner up with 144 and Kirsty took third with 136. Thankfully, as a stewards enquiry might have been required if Kirsty had done any better, given that she was sitting next to Alex on the sofa for the duration of the quiz. Mind you she does have good form, finishing runner up last time, or was it the time before? I can't remember, anyway, she is smart, that's all we need to know.

So, it looks like I am rambling a bit here, so let's move on. We will be quizzing again 3rd June with Pippa taking the Jeremy Paxman role.

See you there, folks.

Well all I can say is I feel sorry for the children at Ms. Loxton's school as she turns out to be the Professor Snape of the English education system. High Intensity Interval Training is defined by Wikepedia as alternating short periods of intense anaerobic exercise with less intense recovery periods, until too exhausted to continue. This was pretty much how I felt after 55 fiendishly difficult questions on topics including isoloceles triangles and plagues of the ancient world!

Writing this morning with my head wrapped in a wet towel, I can hardly recall the questions - perhaps I shouldn't have had that low alcohol beer!.

What I can remember is that it was yet another great evening with the lovely GoodGymers from Waltham Forest. Hats off the Ms. Loxton for putting together such a challenging and facinating quiz. Congratulations to Alex for coming up trumps and volunteering to do the next quiz, which will be in place of our monthly social on Wednesday 6th May, sign up here

We will also be Zooming every Wednesday for drinks and chats so sign up to next week's session here

And of course, there is still time to sign-up to this week's Training Challenge which you have until Saturday to complete. Sign-up here

First things first and a huge thank you to our quiz master extraordinaire, Ercole Lugari. What a brilliant set of questions stitched together on a slick online format that rewarded the fastest finger first as well as the correct answers.

Categories included Waltham Forest Flag Names Movies Athletics History Animals Politics UK General Music Food The questions came thick and fast with Kirsty (representing the NHS) and Joanna (representing secondary schools) emerging as the front runners and slugging it out for the top spot. It was a close run thing but eventually, Joanna won. Considering both of their employers have recently been noticed as just about the most important things in this country by a country mile, it seems only right that they did so well.

Looks like we will be doing the same again next week so I hope you can join us. Details to follow in my next weekly fitness email.

Tonight we have reached the end of our three-week project to decorate a large room at Greenleaf Road Baptist Church. When we started this space evoked a drab 1990's decor, and now it is taking shape as a much more jolly place. A pristine and resplendent white room full of possibilities and I am sure the dynamic team who run this thriving community hub will soon put it to good use.

For everyone who has contributed over the three weeks, well done, your efforts are appreciated. They will have a real positive impact on the overall ambience of a lovely community space.

We reached another and more poignant ending tonight as we bid farewell to long-term GoodGymWF pair, Alex and Kirsty. Between the two of them, they have clocked up a whopping 67 good deeds with us. Sadly they are moving far off to the unchartered territories of South London. The number of deeds they have done is nothing compared to the bonhomie they have brought to our collective. We will miss them but I feel sure our paths will cross one day again. Of course, we couldn't say goodbye without some cake and beer so after our painting and, now familiar, hill reps, it was back to Mirth to enjoy the cake supplied by our departing duo.

Thanks, guys, we will miss you.

For those of us that remain, we will be back to an old favourite, The Mill next week for some indoor bunting making followed by something other than hill reps, I promise! Sign-up here

I'm kinda, sorta tempted to copy and paste last week's run report here as tonight was less of a sequel and more of a remake. Like all the best remakes (think Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong), it was even better than the original. Once again we had tea, once again we had biscuits, once again we had paint and once again we had hill reps. This time though we had more and longer hill reps! I could tell everyone loved this by the collective groan when I uttered the words "and now for five hill reps of this massive steep, long hill", or words to that effect.

To be fair, we had to do something as our destination of Greenleaf Road Baptist Church is about 1-minute's run from our base at Mirth. Fortunately, Walthamstow is not short of hills, so we didn't have to venture too far to find our Everest.

Anyway, enough of hills and back to painting. The crew done a right bang-up job tonight. This room is taking shape now and one more visit should just about finish off its transformation from its drab 1990's colour scheme to a lovely bright white.

That's about it other than a couple of important dates for the diary:

1. This Friday quite a few of the Waltham Forest crew are showing up in town for The Unofficial GG10th Birthday Party. Please come along.

2. As next month happens to be December. We thought a Christmas Party would be nice. Check out the details and register your interest here

Okay before I get into last night's excitingness here is some important news

Next week GoodGym will be celebrating our 10th birthday! That's right peeps we have had a decade of deeds since our humble beginings. GG started in Tower Hamlets in the naughties and is now a nationwide operation with hundreds of brilliant people like you making a real difference in your communities. To mark the occasion we will be taking a special photo at a local landmak. It is, therefore, a great coincidence that we will be running past Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium on our way to South Chingford Memorial Park. It would be great to get a good turnout for this so I hope you can join us. Sign-up here

Go Wild

The nights might be drawing in, but we are still making the most of the light evenings. And what a pleasant one it was tonight as we headed out from our base to the wilderness of Leyton Marsh. The run had it all, setting sun, a cricket pitch, the aroma of freshly baked bread and two super new GoodGymers from beyond The Wall. Hadrian's Wall that is! We had Callum and, 2019 London Marathoner, Aimee. Also joining us for a second outing was Kathryn. Great to see all of you guys and great running/plogging tonight.

After our 2-mile run, we arrived well warmed up and ready to go. It didn't take long to kit ourselves out with litter pickers, bags and gloves. Once done, we were ready to smarten up one of the greenest places in East London. The usual mixture of the strange and the bizarre went into our bags. Top prize for odd item of the day was split between Jo and Kevin. Each of them finding one left and one right glittery flip-flop at different locations, reuniting the pair to spend eternity in a landfill site.

Under a stunning sky, we swept the Lea Bridge Road and Leyton Marsh. Soon it was time to get back on the road for another testing 2-miler, this time with a bit of elevation, so it was a bunch of sweaty and nicely exhausted runners who cruised into MM&M at dusk.

Before I go some shout outs to Ruby, Ramon and Ercole who are all running the Richmond Marathon this Sunday. Best of luck all of you, looking forward to seeing you there.

While we were all enjoying the summer, it looks like autumn slowly crept up and hit us over the head with a bag of dry brown leaves. According to Google, autumn doesn't start until the end of the month, but if you ask me, it has already arrived. Mind you I'm not complaining, I quite like this season and it still means there is plenty to do out of doors with cutting back stuff, picking up leaves and all that to keep the hardworking GoodGymers of Waltham Forest busy.

And hardworking they are because we had a great turnout last night for our long run to St John's of Leytonstone. We also had our youngest ever volunteer, A-level student Shiala who come along with her dad, Sajid. What a great team the two of them made superb running and getting stuck into the task. Great work.

Of course, it was great work from all concerned with everyone arriving on time and pounding out the 2.5 miles run at a decent pace. Of course, the thought of our monthly social at the end of our exertions probably proved an excellent incentive to get things done.

There to greet us on-site was the ever cheerful and helpful Maureen who equipped us with the tools for the job. St John's is a stunning church set in a beautiful garden. This Saturday evening they host the London Gala Orchestra who will be playing a recital of Peter and the Wolf. Our job was to spruce up the churchyard ahead of this event. The team did an outstanding job of this, ridding the long pathway of weeds and cutting back the overgrowing branches.

After beavering away at this task, it was time to get back on the road for another 2.5 miles (5 in total!). Needless to say, after all that work, we were ravenous when we walked into the Turkish restaurant, Gokuzu for our post-run meal. Massive thanks go to Nerys for organising this; it was a great choice. The staff looked after us with plenty of on the house bread and delicious salad arriving almost as soon as we sat down. The food was terrific and plentiful too.

Great work all. Next week we are off to the marshes to do a bit of a plog, sign-up here

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