Lovely evening with lovely people!

Arriving and task on time, Ercole was the first one at the church waiting for Julia and Rosalind running a few mins late! After a quick hello and how's it goings we grabbed the gardening tools and went out into the car park to clear the area of weeds that started to poke through the pavement slabs. We also cleared the gutters by the entrance. It was surprisingly involved and energetic to pull out the weeds and scrape the dirt between the paving stones. But it was a great opportunity to put the world to rights and catch-up on what was everyone up to. We discussed things like bunting, anaemia, in real time blood testing, anti-social behaviour, back pain and so much more:)

Jog and walk after a task was just lovely as the evening was mild and the sun was shining. We gently jogged to the Lloyds park and then practiced our best race walking to the amusement of everyone in the walk. Then we just walked around the fields and made our way back to the Greenleaf base.

Tea and biscuits were kindly offered to us and we rewarded ourselves with a nice sit down over a cuppa, pineapple (sugar) juice and selection of biscuits! Such a lovely evening to spend with the GoodGym family! Thank you to everyone for a great evening to break up the week!

Next week we are going to Saint Church for some gardening jobs to try and improve this lovely setting so that it's used by the local community and not the local drug users!

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of our latest group, here are some important announcements.

Would you like to volunteer at The Hackney Half?

In addition to a fun day out in the sunshine (probably), you get Free Virgin Sport bib, i.e. entry to one of the Asics10K or Oxford Half this year, or the next Hackney Half in 2021.

Essential info and sign-up

• Date: 17th May
• Location: Hackney Empire (15mins walk from Bethnal Green Central Line)
• Task: Handing out water with a load of other GG people
• Sign-up here

GGWF Taskforce Member Ercole has set up an excellent Community Mission on 8th March.

Sign-up to the Leyton Jubilee junior parkrun Volunteer takeover here. It's like an adult Parkrun but much shorter and far more rewarding. What could be better than helping to facilitate youngsters doing a 2km race?

The next monthly social will be at Yardsale Pizza on Wednesday 4th March.

Check the WhatsApp group for details. If you are not on the group, email hit me up

Wednesday's Group Run

Thanks to the miserable weather on Tuesday night, we picked up a couple of GG Hackney regulars this Wednesday. Of course, it's always lovely to see Alex Passa who is no stranger to us here at The Forest, but we also got to meet Clair Sim who despite chalking up a whopping 175 good deeds, has not joined us since our launch almost 2-years ago.

It was also lovely to welcome the ever cheerful Helen Farebrother-Naylor who joined us for her first Group Run today. Of course, Helen was chalking-up run number two after joining us on a January Challenge Community Mission. I feel sure that there are more to come.

So why do I keep referencing chalk? I thought you would never ask! Well, you see we did a bit of painting tonight. Frankly, GGWF has become pretty handy with painting over the winter having splodged on gallons of the stuff on various wall in various places. The thing is it is always white! White, white white. Now white is no bad thing (unless you are Captain Ahab), but I think everyone was longing for a different shade of something. In part, our wish was granted with the opportunity to do a chalkboard feature in one of the rooms. Only a few people did this while everyone else stuck with the white, but it was enough. Good lord, it took me a while to explain the pun, didn't it?

As this was another task as our base, there was the option of a lovely Tour De Walthamstow afterwards. I was delighted to see that most people were up for it so out we headed to the damp tree-lined avenues surrounding Lloyd Park. With only a couple of wrong turnings by yours truly, which were quickly corrected by our every reliable backmarker, Señor Raymond Umunna we completed a decent 5km run with a lovely hill climb at the end. Magnificent stuff all round.

Next week we will be doing the same thing in a different place. Sign-up here

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It doesn't get much easier than doing a task at your base and that's what the crew from GoodGym Waltham Forest had slated tonight's. Pretty handy when one of our plucky crew was walking wounded and unable to run (kudos, Pippa!).

As for the task? Well, over the winter GGWF have developed some pretty decent skills with paintbrushes. We have been slapping coats of paint on all over the place, today was another one of those tasks. It was out with the orange and in with the white as the team set about smartening up a couple of rooms in the lovely Greenleaf Road Baptist Church.

After painting, cleaning and a quick game of table tennis, we decided that a nice little tour of Walthamstow was in order. With the chilly wind whistling around the street outside, we went kicked off with an indoor warmup up before trotting out into the night for a few km's.

We are back here next week for a bit more of the same. Join us and sign-up today.

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Tonight we have reached the end of our three-week project to decorate a large room at Greenleaf Road Baptist Church. When we started this space evoked a drab 1990's decor, and now it is taking shape as a much more jolly place. A pristine and resplendent white room full of possibilities and I am sure the dynamic team who run this thriving community hub will soon put it to good use.

For everyone who has contributed over the three weeks, well done, your efforts are appreciated. They will have a real positive impact on the overall ambience of a lovely community space.

We reached another and more poignant ending tonight as we bid farewell to long-term GoodGymWF pair, Alex and Kirsty. Between the two of them, they have clocked up a whopping 67 good deeds with us. Sadly they are moving far off to the unchartered territories of South London. The number of deeds they have done is nothing compared to the bonhomie they have brought to our collective. We will miss them but I feel sure our paths will cross one day again. Of course, we couldn't say goodbye without some cake and beer so after our painting and, now familiar, hill reps, it was back to Mirth to enjoy the cake supplied by our departing duo.

Thanks, guys, we will miss you.

For those of us that remain, we will be back to an old favourite, The Mill next week for some indoor bunting making followed by something other than hill reps, I promise! Sign-up here

I'm kinda, sorta tempted to copy and paste last week's run report here as tonight was less of a sequel and more of a remake. Like all the best remakes (think Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong), it was even better than the original. Once again we had tea, once again we had biscuits, once again we had paint and once again we had hill reps. This time though we had more and longer hill reps! I could tell everyone loved this by the collective groan when I uttered the words "and now for five hill reps of this massive steep, long hill", or words to that effect.

To be fair, we had to do something as our destination of Greenleaf Road Baptist Church is about 1-minute's run from our base at Mirth. Fortunately, Walthamstow is not short of hills, so we didn't have to venture too far to find our Everest.

Anyway, enough of hills and back to painting. The crew done a right bang-up job tonight. This room is taking shape now and one more visit should just about finish off its transformation from its drab 1990's colour scheme to a lovely bright white.

That's about it other than a couple of important dates for the diary:

1. This Friday quite a few of the Waltham Forest crew are showing up in town for The Unofficial GG10th Birthday Party. Please come along.

2. As next month happens to be December. We thought a Christmas Party would be nice. Check out the details and register your interest here

We were on for a spot of decorating tonight in Waltham Forest with the first of three visits to the marvellous Greenleaf Road Baptist Church. If you don't know this place, it is one of those terrific community hubs where there is always something going on. Our grafting tonight was accompanied by a local choir group belting out songs by The Killers among other contemporary artists.

We were met on site tonight by Dan, the dapper, modernising and hard-working church minister who had set up our task perfectly with plenty of equipment, dust sheets and even tea and biscuits. Nice one!

The room we were painting had seen better days and needed a spruce up. Mind you it has a lovely parquet floor, so we took care was before sploshing on the lovely bright white emulsion. Our paint replaced the existing colour scheme, which was eloquently described by one volunteer, Rachel, as dead salmon pink. As always the team toiled away cheerfully making excellent progress with sugar soap and paint.

Following our duties, we headed out into a chilly night for some hill reps and thanks to Raymond and Sajid, we soon found a suitably steep street for our excursions. It wasn't long until hearts were racing, blood was pumping and all thoughts of the chilly weather had abated.

From there was headed back through the streets and into Mirth, Marvel and Maud to toast the fantastic news that long term GoodGymer, Pippa had recently got engaged to her partner and fellow Cross FIt enthusiast, Craig. Fantastic news, congratulations to both of you guys💍🎊

If you missed out on this excellent task this week, never fear because we are doing the whole thing again next week. Sign-up here to be part of something wonderful.

Also, don't forget about the unofficial GG 10th Birthday Party next Friday. This will be taking the place of our monthly social and you can sign-up to that here

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