*We ran to help a charity sort through a whole stack of donations, saving them days of work! *

So lovely to see ours runners this week, some fresh from success at the Larmer Tree races - a definite racing bug is going around at the moment!

This week we were tasked with helping Hope Housing charity sort (literally) a shed load of donations ready for them to be distributed across the charity's various sites.

Our run took us through Boscombe Chine Gardens, there was a superb misty atmosphere in the air and it was lovely to have a dry and lighter evening - Spring is Springing!!

We headed through some residential streets and arrived on St Swithuns road to be greeted by a charity worker, Mark. Hope Housing really does fab work across our town. Providing shelter and indeed homes for those in need. Not only that, they support individuals with their health, wellbeing and getting back on their feet and into work.

We'd helped Mark out before and were very pleased to see our table tennis effort still going strong! This week we were greeted with mountains of textiles to sort and bag ready for distribution. Mark gave us fantastic instructions and we began sorting.

We were amazed at the amount of donated stock - it just kept on coming. But the group worked hard to sort it, bag it and also had fun rummaging through the retro duvet covers and wierd and wonderful clothing items. Daryl even got to take home a transformers duvet set (he claimed it was for a friend, hehe!).

Big big night for Caprice, who got to experience her first ever 'chain' - we formed a chain to load all the bagged stock back into the shed. Mark thanked us and told us it would have taken him FOUR DAYS without our help - amazing job GoodGym runners - thank you and well done!

Next week we have a longer run so be prepared to work on pace and stamina - see you then!

9 runner hit the streets of Westminster to promote the new friendly over-50s choir for St Paul's Marylebone.

Nice one Emily and Meneka for completing your first GoodGym runs - give them a cheer!

It was bitterly cold before arriving at the warmth of our new start point at New Balance Flagship Store. Amongst the speeding manikins and selection of the latest fresh foam shoes we assembled and discussed our task.

The St Paul's Marylebone church was working with Open Age to start a new social singing group for the over 50s. They needed to let the local neighbourhood know when and where it's happening. This was our job for the evening.

"entice the local residents"

We were tackling about 2 square km of streets around the church hoping to entice the local residents into the (non-religious) singing sessions which aim to prevent isolation.

We headed bravely out across Oxford Street with Phil, who recently became a year older, bringing up the rear.

We focused on our footstrike working in pairs to try and identify where our feet were landing in relation to our hips. It was dark, so this was hard.

"the far north"

2.5km later we'd arrived at St Paul's Marylebone - we gathered in it's slightly-warmer-than-outside foyer and distributed the leaflets to our three extraordinary teams. One heading to the far north, one to the near north and a further team, to.... the South.

We gave ourselves 15mins to distrib as many leaflets as we could or until our fingers fell off with cold.

" The word was out there."

15 mins later the teams arrived back. We had about 20 of our 200 flyers remaining. The word was out there.

On the way back we did a mix of ethiopian-style-arm-waving and increasing a pace by increasing our cadence. Phil lead us out on a 1.5km effort along the south of the Regent's park and we hot-footed (and cold handed-it) back to NB HQ, getting into the warm was just wonderful.

Well done all, job done. See you next time.