WE HAVE A NEW CENTURION!

Huge applause and praise please for the brilliant Charlotte on her 100th Good Deed. Charlotte has come a long way from someone who felt too shy and anxious to come along to her first ever GoodGym Group Run to now being a face at GoodGym Newcastle that everyone knows. She has never let anything stand in her way and is a key part of our Task Force, helping to organise tasks and manage huge parts of our social media to help to spread the word. Charlotte often volunteers herself as back marker and walk leader, and you can find out why that's so important to her in this story and this one too !

As you will have spotted already we had a massive turn out tonight thanks to a team visit from Newcastle Northern Angels, the Newcastle University Cheerleading team! The team were absolutely full of energy and enthusiasm and it was great to have them along on such a chilly night in toon. We had a catch up from the weekend and a long head count before sending Rachael and Katie off on the walk. To get everyone moving we played rock-paper-scissors-run-squat to warm up before we set off.

We were back at Newcastle Eagles Community Arena tonight where we have been helping to transform the gardens with monthly visits to clear and weed the area around the main car park. This visit saves the Eagles charity close to £1000 as well as the time of many other volunteers who lend a hand and it's always a great physical task that we love to get stuck into. Neil our super-organised task owner was ready for action as always with tools and hi-vis for everyone.

Now as we were such a huge group tonight we had to split in half with a group weeding while the others did the fitness session before a swap over. There were games, drills and burpees to keep as warm as we could at all times. We haven't split a task like this before and it seemed to work really well with the time absolutely flying over and everyone managing to work at top speeds while having fun. Neil was really pleased with what we got done and there was time for him to say a big group thank you to everyone before we ran back out into the night!

No community missions this weekend but there were two completely brilliant Newcastle Parks Community missions over the weekend with some fab autumnal photos. If you haven't seen the reports yet you can find them here: Saturday's is here and Sunday's is here Well done to all who led and got involved. We continue our community missions into the end of the year so if you haven't done one yet, check out the listings and get signed up.

Have a great week knowing you started it the best way doing good things.

Anji x

What happens in the warm up stays in the warm up.. thankfully!

Last week was all about Youth Homeless North East and tonight was all about the sequel! We decided following a bunch of leftover leaflets and a gap in our Group Runs that tonight was as good a night as any to head out further into Jesmond to get dropping! You can find out what we did last week here.

We didn't have any Community Missions to catch up on so we had our usual parkrun round up and looked ahead at what was coming up. We also gave Task Forcer Richard a big cheer which we are sure he heard in New York, where he ran an amazing 2:58 in the Marathon yesterday. All of that despite trapping his finger in a letterbox last week! We can't wait to hear about it when you're back, Richard.

It was great to welcome Pete who gave me a geography lesson on where Stockport is as he was here tourist-ing for the evening. We also acquired Damien who's moved here from Norfolk where he ran with GG Norfolk a couple of times in the past too. Both were great additions to the group and huge kudos to them for coming along on such a rotten night!

We had a fireworks themed game of tag for the warm up then it was off to Jesmond with our own fireworks display (super flashy head torches, obviously) and Paul back leading the pack after a few weeks away. Conversation topic was around sequels tonight, and whether they are ever a good thing. We decided that in the case of Back To The Future 2, Aliens, Terminator 2 and, er, Paddington 2.. they definitely are.

You'll notice a distinct lack of photos tonight and that's because the weather was absolutely appalling and it was a case of gritting our teeth and cracking on with the job in hand. The group stayed together so well on the run out, moving at a faster pace than we usually do and expertly back-marked by Debbie and Michael. It was amazing to find when we reached our delivery point of Osborne Road that the leaflets weren't complete mush!

Teams of 4 assembled and streets were covered in no time with almost 200 YHNE and GoodGym Newcastle leaflets in a double-good drop. Job done and mission completed in 18 minutes! Creating a part 2 paid off and hopefully will come back in loads of lovely donations for YHNE in the coming days and weeks.

It was too wet and cold to stay still for long so it was off to Exhibition Park for the fitness session. Working in pairs, the challenge was to collect as many points by running short sharp uphill laps (1 point) and longer flat out-and-backs (2 points) on repeat for 8 minutes. What was really cool about this was that you could do either section and entirely at your own pace, taking as many breaks as you liked. Nick and Abi were victorious with a fantastic 38 points- 10 points ahead of second place!

Dream team!

You can join Aimee for a Community Mission for Newcastle Parks at St Lawrence Park on Saturday, or get involved on Sunday with Katy at City Stadium. Remember with Community Missions, you make your own way there and spend as long as you like. Cups of tea guaranteed with all Newcastle Parks tasks!

We're back next Monday with our monthly visit to our friends at Newcastle Eagles for some gardening and good things. There's a walking option on that too, so bring someone along who wants to try us out for the first time.

Have a great week, you deserve it! Anji x