We were hugely excited to attack the painting task tonight at First Site. After a fun warm up, involving some weaving about and a 'tunnel of love' for Fay, we headed up through Castle Park to the contemporary art gallery to see what was in store. Eddie, the site manager, dished out protective gloves for everyone, and handed out brushes, rollers, masking tape and paint. The group then got into different teams to work their way around the walls and transform the community room.

Eddie explained that the room is heavily used and the white walls get regularly marked and scuffed, so all the GoodGymers enthusiastically got stuck in, washing down the walls and doors, painting over the marks, scraping off the sticky bits from the floor, and even washing down the blackboard wall. In no time at all, the room went from looking rather grubby and unloved, to looking absolutely beautiful and Eddie's verdict of: 'incredible' was spot on. Using the room at the same time was Claire, who was practising her hula-hooping to some pretty funky-sounding bouncy house music, so naturally there was some groovy shapes being thrown by the goodgymers, who were getting in the spirit. Claire happily showed everyone how to spin the hoops at the end of the task too, so we even got some fitness thrown in - hula style!

Celebrating her 50th Good Gym run+task tonight was Chris - many congratulations!! Other news items included; a new parkrun PB for Ella, 100 parkruns for Helen, and we must mention Tav's ongoing coach runs, well done Tav!

A quick run to the pub for some, and to leisure world for the others, to pick up their cars, and then we re-grouped to have a good old chat over a drink and some grub. Well done everyone - a really great effort this evening, and a fantastic result for only 30 minutes work - absolutely amazing! Join us next week for more GoodGym GoodTimes, 6.45pm at Leisure World.

The Goodgymers of Colchester gathered on a chilly evening ready for another evening of running and being all round good eggs.

Kudos was handed to Helen & Ella for super performances at two different parkrun venues on Saturday, before we headed outside for FUN warm up including a game of "knee tag" with star jump forfeits.

Then we were off, led by Ian on a short run to the Middleborough Water Fountain Garden to carry out a task for Colchester in Bloom. Our ETA didn't quite tie in with Pam who was bringing rakes, brushes and bags. So the opportunity was seized for an impromptu interval session of equal effort/recovery between the trees.

Pam arrived and gave us instructions to clear the fallen leaves - but not the bark - from around the plants and to pick up any litter in and around the garden area. As usual, everyone set about the task enthusiastically and within 30 minutes we had several huge bags of leaves and twigs ready to be collected by Pam.

With our good deed done we head just around the corner from the garden to take on the altogether more daunting Balkerne Hill. Hill repeats in train formation - sprint from the back to the front - and Balkerne Hill is a long hill - fabulous effort by everyone!

The return run was completed with a Wall Sit Challenge - who could be last man or woman standing (or sitting in this case) Wonderful strength and resilience from the whole group, especially Christine & Bob who were the final two to fall at around 4 minutes........ and couldn't really walk properly afterwards!

Don't forget if anyone can make the Chelmsford Starter Session on Saturday they'd love to see you!

Next week's Colchester Group Run is to Colchester Foodbank - you can find more details and sign up HERE

Tonights photos are courtesy of Christine - Thank you.

Clad in hats, gloves, and some rather natty new headtorches, a group of 10 intrepid runners did not let the bitter cold put them off last night.

We started off the night talking about the amazing Mission Possible this weekend, where teams of three will be taking on a mass volunteering effort, spreading good all over the city! Good luck everyone, see you in the pub afterwards...

Braving the cold, we stepped outside and dived straight into our warm ups whilst discussing who we would ask round for dinner. Charlie Brooker, Stephen Hawking, David Beckham and Alan Shearer were all lucky enough to score an invite.

The night's task was at the Waterman's Centre, and independent charity which aims to bring art to the local community. It was just under a 2.5k run, and we set off briskly. 20 speedy minutes later we were there, ready to get stuck in.

We were handed shears, bin liners and brooms, and tasked with the job of clearing leaves and cutting back the branches in the car park. It was quite a labour intensive job, which was good, because we needed to keep warm. Half an hour later and several bin bags later we were done. Or were we?

No, we were not. There was the small matter of hill sprints to do. Now, after talking about the possibility of hill sprints for several weeks, if not months, we had to take what we could get. The small incline in the carpark would have to do. In pairs we tackled five reps, keeping our chests high and taking care to pump our arms but to keep them at a 90 degree angle behind our body. You all looked like superstar athletes.

The run back was smattered with some lovely conditioning exercises, just to keep things exciting, and we stopped just short of the Town Hall to do our final bit of fitness. In two teams we assumed plank position, passing the golden satsuma along the line. When the satsuma got the end, somebody shouted 'burpee', and the whole team had to do said burpee, increasing by one each time. Team Jo, Michelle, Jeremy and Andy won the challenge and as their prize, took home the two fought-over satsumas. Lucky them.

During our stretches we realised we have only two runs left THIS YEAR. Let's make the most of them, starting with our penultimate one next week. Stay warm until then :)

200 flyers, 7 keeno runners, 6k and a whole load of guilty pleasures made up another cracking night in Hounslow!

We kicked off the evening with a few bits of news, including plans for our long run on the 3rd December and cheering Remy to half marathon glory on the 2nd December. Not forgetting of course that next week is our very FIRST birthday and we shall be celebrating with a great task (putting up flatpack furniture), a birthday-themed fitness game, and a pub quiz that we are going to smash. There will almost certainly be cake.

We then took ourselves outside for a warm up and to find out everybody's guilty pleasures. Although we should never feel guilty about pleasure, of course. TV shows (trashy and decidedly not trashy) featured quite highly in between high knees and heel kicks, including Outlander, Gilmore Girls, Made in Chelsea and Love Island. To which the latter particularly Ella had showed an impressive commitment. Sunflower seeds and bad action films we agreed were more noble pursuits.

We had a speedy run down to Waterman's Art Centre - a great independent charity that aims to inspire people of all backgrounds through creativity and provide art for all. Almost 2.5 k later and we arrived at the reception desk to find a pile of 200 flyers for an upcoming Digital Weekender waiting for us to distribute. This event in a couple of weeks is crammed full of fun and fascinating free sessions, so do check it out.

Now, we had done this before for Waterman's with mixed success, but this time we were going to do it better. We had already mapped out an area that we were going to hit up, so quickly made our way there. Splitting up into two groups to cover both sides of the street, we got ourselves into formation to put a flyer through every letterbox. Soon we were operating like (a bit rusty) clockwork. We covered about 2k in this way, encountering some menacing barking and some beautiful houses, and soon found ourselves empty handed and back at Turnham Green for our fitness session.

This week were CODE CRACKING. Yes, it was complicated, and no, it probably wasn't explained very well. The idea was that two teams had to each crack a 6 number code. Each number related to a certain exercise and could appear more than once. Each team had to guess the correct sequence but to find out whether they had, they had to do each exercise. A square bracket meant it was the right number in the right position. Phew. I said it was complicated. Still, it was no match for Ella, Andreea and Natasha, who just in the nick of time managed to crack that code and were declared the winners. I mean, there wasn't an actual prize. But they won an overall sense of satisfaction, and that is priceless.

After a few stretches and a cool down we revelled in our post-run, post-goodness endorphin high and called it a night. Great work team. Bring on next week!