19 good eggs ran 3km to help out H&F Mind.

We started our lovely sunny evening in the Hammersmith the Better gym. Here I gave the runners a briefing about our run ahead and the night’s task. We had two runners Grace and Aisling who joined us for their first Goodgym session and Paul touristing from Wansworth (this being his lucky 13th area in London to visit).

After shooing the chickens back in the barn and warming up the rest of our limbs, we headed off on the short run towards the task. The streets were pretty busy on the way there, but we made it in one piece.

Once we arrived at Mind we found they had 8 chairs for us to build. This involved deciphering the flat pack furniture instructions and some good team work. Each chair had two people working to construct it. As we had 2 bonus goodgymers to chair ratio, Catriona and Paul got stuck into weeding the two flower beds... with spoons - very resourceful.

Team Anders and Sarah W completed their chair 1st out of the group, then Team Jason and Josh 2nd, then in 3rd place Sarah K and Steve.

After everyone had completed the chairs and we had taken a photo for proof we head off towards Lille Road Rec.

Here we did some running technique, muscle memory drills. - doing high skips for leg drive & calf strength - high knees to reinforce knee lift - bum kicks for promote quick feet/lower leg movement - running backwards for glutes & hamstring strengthening - stroppy ponies for practicing our foot landing position

After that, we finished up with a time trial around the park.

After the session it was time for our monthly social in Draught House where we went for drinks, food and some DIY flag making. The awesome Catriona supplied us with fabric pens, paints and a big bed sheet to make Hammersmith & Fulham’s flag for the Olympics. Lots of fun was had by all.

Lovely stuff! Until next week, happy running :)

Flyering on the fly

With our task for the night cancelled just hours before we were due to meet for our regular group run, I had come up with a new good deed for the gang to help with. Thankfully a couple of our runners had helped out a local arts charity called Uthink for last two weekends with some painting and already had some leaflets from them for us to deliver. But this pile wasn’t going to be enough, so I arranged to pick up more on our run. And so the night unfolded as follows:

We started off our night with our usual welcome speech and an unusually vague “wait and see” briefing of our night’s task, (as I still wasn’t totally sure until we arrived at UThink). Following on from this we headed outside for a warmup and then headed off to pick up the flyers.

Once we arrived at Uthink’s gallery space on the corner of Winslow road we met Viv there a volunteer who’s been helping the charity organise their program of events. She gave us a little introduction about UThink and the H&F art festival they would soon be hosting. Our task for the evening was to deliver their flyers about the art classes they run and the art festival into local shops, cafes and pubs up the Fulham Palace road. So we did just that and also delivered some in the Hammersmith shopping centre too.

After losing people and finding them and then losing some more people and find them... we head off to the river for a bit more of a run and a fitness session.

Ring of exercises

This week’s fitness session was devised by the group. We all stood in a group and took turns picking the next exercise. It ended up including a lot of pressed-up related exercises (no-one can blame me tomorrow for achey arms).

At times on the run it felt like we’d barely run anywhere except around in circles but we actually clocked up 5.77km in the end. Thanks for sticking with it guys! #dogoodgetfit

Another record breaking group run number with 21 runners, which smashed last week’s total of 18 runners. This extra large gang couldn’t of come on a better night as our task need lots of pairs of hands. We had been asked along to Age UK’s activity centre to help tackle their overflowing storage rooms.

The night started off with the usual welcome chat, task briefing and news update. Including details about the Olympics and wishing Sarah, Catriona and Tom good luck on their half marathons this weekend.

After all that lovely stuff we headed outside for a dynamic warmup. After which we headed off on the short 1.5km run to the task. Aileen, Volunteer Coordinator and her manager were there to meet us when we arrived. They gave the runners a quick intro into the activities at the Service Centre and thanked us for our help in advance.

There were two small rooms piled high with boxes, furniture and juke that needed sorting out as they were becoming a tad dangerous for the staff to go into. Our volunteers a formed a human chain, clearing both rooms in no time. Next, half the team repacked and sorted the boxes and general bric-à-brac into more of an order. Whilst the other half started refilling the store rooms with the big items of furniture and fabric rolls.

You can see from the photos the unbelievable end result!

After their handy work was done, we headed outside to take a group photo in-front of the Age UK sign for Aileen. Then we said our goodbyes and headed over to Lillie Road park to do some arm technique work and relay sprints.

3 things to remember

The runners had to consider 3 things whilst doing their leg of the relay. Not crossing their arms in front of their chest, driving their elbows backwards (not forwards) and keeping a nice right angle shape. We did this continuous relays for 5 minutes. Enough time for most people to give it a go over 100meters a couple of times. Then most of the group tried out their luck on the Lille road Strava segment, whilst a couple stayed behind to do some strength work with me.

After everyone was back there was just enough time to jog back to base and do some cool down stretches.

Lovely stuff. Well done everybody. Specially new runners Patrick , Luis, Marta and Linn. Give them a cheer!

Maybe a record breaking turn out for H&F when 17 runners turned up ready to #dogoodandgetfit. A whopping 5 of which were brand new to Goodgym - welcome Lena, Fei-Fei, Steve, Clodagh & Stephanos and 1 was Danny a GG tourist from Brent.

H&F Olympians

This week’s welcome speech was mainly comprised of me boffing on about the eagerly anticipated Goodgym Olympics on 30th. Of which H&F are going to go in full force with a flag to boot !

As is tradition, the news and welcome chat were followed by a warm up outside the gym and then on to Queen Caroline Estate. It’s only a stone’s throw from our meeting point to this task. Suzie, the Gardening Club's only volunteer, met us there to show us how we could help. 6 runners got to work weeding the herb patch whilst Sarah pruned some overgrown plants. Then the rest of the group headed over with bags of compost and tools to the veg patch. They were needed to weed the raised beds, spread compost on the newly turned soil and then liberally water all over.

This group finished with 5 minutes to spare so we quickly used this bonus time to weed another veg patch on the other side of the estate.

Once our time was up and everyone had been herded up from all parts of the estate we said our goodbyes to Susie and headed off down the river.

Ab-solutely fabulous

I had originally devised a environment based fitness session for this part of the evening, but that we had to rethink this very quickly due to the amount of people on the towpath. Instead we did exercises along the run in quiet spots. One quiet spot was a lovely patch of grass overlooking the sunset. Here, accompanied by some music we did and an 'abs & arms' session. One nearby resident came out to watch with his giant pet rabbit.

With abs burning we returned back up the river and doing an Indian file along the way - this was where the runner at the back had to head to the front when I blew the whistle. To complete the river run we polished off with wall squats and a group photo in the sunset.

Lovely stuff. Until next time, PSB out.