17 GoodGymers had a litter Tuesday pick me up as they trashed out a 3km run and litter pick

Tonight we had another rubbish task but were excited to have a Bexcellent GoodGym special guest join us from Edinburgh! Welcome back Bex!

It was also lovely to welcome along, Marc from GoodGym Croydon, thanks for joining us!

Trash in the pan news

With everyone ready and raring to go we headed outside to our intro and warm-up spot, which had been made slightly smaller due to a skip placed in it...who'd do such a thing?!

First up, we congratulated Alice, Lucy and Speedy on completing The Big Half on Sunday 🏅🙌.

1. Race volunteers needed - Volunteer at adidas City Runs: 1 hour - Sunday 5th April and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

2. Community Missions - Lots of Community Missions happening this weekend! Help sort surplus donations at City Harvest in Acton sign up here. Check out all the other upcoming Community Missions here.

3. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here. To join the GoodGym Team click here.

A litter bit of improvisation

Having lasted out the intro speech and news as long as I possibly could to ensure all those who were running late 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ could catch us before we set off, we finally started the warm-up.

We began with some high knees, spotty dogs, Biscuit's favourite and some dynamic stretches - lunges, squats and shooing of the chickens before fore a quick round of the 'number exercise' challenge 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣,

Excellent co-ordination and the ability to tell the left from the right was something we discovered Bex did not possess tonight which very much amused us all (especially me!) 😂. We finished off with some fast feet and headed off on our run.

Matt lead us along the river to The Crabtree Wharf, a beautiful inlet on the River Thames where litter-ally all the floating rubbish washes up and accumulates 🚯. We've found some weird and wonderful things down in this inlet - who can forget the plastic seagull and marine radio from the summer?!

Inlet - "a small arm of the sea, a lake, or a river". Everyone gloved up 🧤 and carefully made their way over the brick wall into the inlet. Upon first look the inlet didn't look too bad, well certainly not as bad as we've seen it previously! Fingers crossed this was down to people littering less and recycling more ♻️, or even better, using less plastics.

Spotted first up by Biscuits was a can of 'Rich Matt' paint which of course we got Matt to pose with, alongside Eloise. Mary, Cookie, Francesca, Marc and Biscuits efficiently combed through the overgrowth and space on the right-hand side of the inlet gathering up handfuls of balls, wrappers, bottles and bottle tops amongst other litter.

Sticks turned into fishing rods for Lucy and 'taller' Beth as they went fishing for litter. Shoes, balls aplenty and a contact lens to make a pair were safely rescued from the river and bagged up, and even more surprisingly, Lucy didn't fall in! 😉

Yucky slushy mud was no match for the team as they worked their way around their inlet. Brambles however, now they were a slightly trickier challenge with many getting caught in their spikes! This week's 'bag lady' was Arba as she held out her bin bag for everyone with handfuls of litter, posing triumphantly.

Out closer to the river, Rowena, Alice, Tom and Bex worked diligently to gather all the litter that had gathered in and around the tree roots, while Speedy carried and opened his bin bag to perfection and ensured no litter was dropped. With 4 bin bags filled and time ticking, we called it a night.

Under the tree of the inlet, beautifully lit by the street light and floodlight, Mo took charge of the artistic direction for the team photo tonight. "Oh it's lovely that!". Another top photo taken by the camera pro, Mo 📸 👌. The team then headed out of the inlet back over the wall, with 'taller' Beth wonderfully styling out a slight slip!

Bin bags were all responsibly disposed off in the industrial sized bins 🚮 before we began our short run back to base, 'the long way' along Fulham Palace Road.

Everyone seemed to pick-up the pace on the run back and we were all back at base in super quick time! Was it the 3-letter word of pub spurring us on I wonder 🤔. Back at base we had a stretch off before heading to the Hop Poles, or home!

Xtremely good work tonight team! You're litter-ally the best! 🙌 Thank you all for coming along.

Next week we're heading back to John Betts Primary to help label the library books and other jobs in and aroudn the school! Sign up for next week's run here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend! 😃 See you next week!

Unless you're heading back to Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿...

Holy crêpe! 20 GoodGym'ers ran 6km as they did a litter pick of plogging around Bishop's Avenue

Another Tuesday evening crêped up on us fast! Despite the cold and dark weather, GoodGymers came out in their shroves to run and do good in their community!

A big welcome along to Francesca and Niamh who joined us for their first GoodGym run, and to our GoodGym Kingston tourists, Kate and Rob. Lovely to have you join us tonight!

Once everyone had successfully located and navigated the labrinyth that is the Hammersmith BetterGym we headed outside for the intros and a round-up of the week's news in our wonderfully glamorous warm-up spot...the corner of a car park! 😂

Have I got shoes for you!

1. Race volunteers needed - Volunteer at The Big Half - Sunday 1st Mar and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

2. Community Missions - Lots of Community Missions happening this Saturday! We'll be helping Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers from 10.20am, sign up here. Check out all the other upcoming Community Missions here.

3. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here. To join the GoodGym Team click here.

And, the BIG news of the week...it may have taken 20 soles to find her match but eventually Katie has found love with some new running shoes, 11 years after she bought her first (and maybe only?!) pair of running shoes* 👟🙌.

Life is batter with GoodGym!

We started our warm-up tonight with some high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and dynamic stretches before a quick blast of the 'number exercise' challenge, great for warming-up both the body and brain! The number '4' was added this week to keep everyone on their toes, and because as Matt said "everyone's a pro at this now". The team certainly dealt with this addition well...so next time '5'?!

With everyone nicely warmed-up we headed off on our nice and simple route tonight, straight down Fulham Palace Road to Bishop's Park Avenue. There was a lot of weaving in and around pedestrians so we decided to head down towards the river where it was far quieter and far more scenic! Along one of the streets we found a perfectly flat wall that just had 'wall sit' written on it so we stopped briefly for our weekly wall sit before continuing on.

Despite the biting wind it was great to run along the river path. We regrouped at the closed part of the river path and asked one of tourists tonight, Rob for an exercise. Clearly not trying to make friends with the team he suggested burpees?! Luckily for the team, our other tourist, Kate suggested the less brutal game of 'head, shoulders, knees, torch'....more mind games! Ultimately, it was Kate who was declared the winner! 👑

Getting fitter removing litter!

Matt led the way down to and through the tennis courts of Bishop's Park which lead to Bishop's Avenue, the road we'd been asked by the Parks Officer to do a litter pick on after all the storms and windy weather of late. As we headed down to the end of the avenue it seemed that there actually wasn't a huge amount of litter to be seen. The Council may havelitter-ally just beat us to it.

How much litter would a litter picker pick, if a litter picker could pick litter? 🚮

However, there was still litter to be picked so the team split into two groups and headed down opposite sides of the avenue with Matt and Chris kindly holding the hawklights to enable there to be more light! Amongst the railings there were wrappers and bits of paper gathered up, while many carefully wadded and sifted through the vegetation, pulling out and bagging lots of interesting finds; these included the sole of a shoe, 'hippy crack' canisters, and lots of bottles.

Tom emerged from a treasure trove of dumped weird and wonderful items with his hands full of rags, bags and broken objects. He had it all! With the temperature dropping and the thoughts of pancakes at the forefront of everyone's minds we called it a night and took a team photo with the four full bin bags of rubbish. Top work team!

As the team headed towards the big bin to throw the bin bags and other loose bits of rubbish away they received a lovely "thank you" from one of the gentlemen playing on the tennis courts. A lovely way to finish 😊.

Trash in the pan

With the trash mob complete we headed off back to base. Thankfully the streets were far emptier on the way back and required less weaving in and out to be done. I'm pretty sure we made it back to base in record-time! Back in our lovely warm-up spot we had a good stretch-off and all headed either home or onto the 'pancake party' hosted by Lucy.

To set the scene, here's a throwback from 2003.

Lucy had made 4 pints of batter to feed lots of hungry GoodGymers! Andrew and Katie started off on pancake cooking and flipping duty, stacking up lots of perfectly-made, and some rather 'on the paler side' pancakes. The selection of toppings was second to none, any topping you wanted it was there! Amongst some confusion and hilarity around who was a vegan (turns out Bev wasn't!) we also tested out some vegan pancakes with almond milk...I think the general consensus was "it's a no from me" 😬.

I went with the sad face pancake while Katie tossed one of hers on the floor...

This pancake then became the 'flipping' pancake, one person would flip the pancake in the air for someone else to catch and there were varying results...sometimes it was caught and other times it was back on the floor! According to Katie, the trick to a good flip was a hot pan!

A pan after Katie's heart...

Flipping perfection

Lucy finished off the last of the batter by wowing us with her pancake art of a unicorn and the GG logo - truly amazing! With lots of pancakes flipped, stacked and eaten it was time to call it a night.

Thank you for the stacks of lovely pancakes, Lucy, they were flipping amazing!!

Shoutouts 📢

1. Well done to Tom for completing a windy and royal Hampton Court Half on Sunday, and for backmarking tonight.
2. Good luck to all those running The Big Half on Sunday! If you're cheering or volunteering, look out for Lucy, Alice, and Speedy.
3. A big THANK YOU to the best pancake host and artist, Lucy!

Next week's task is still TBC, keep an eye on the WhatsApp group and your emails! Sign up for next week's run here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend 😃. Hopefully see you next week!

*This is definitely not recommended! A good rule of thumb is to replace your running shoes every 300–400 miles to prevent injury.