18 brave Goodgymers made beds for beds for the homeless & lifted 25 bags of compost for Groundwork

Welcome along to the three newbies - Melanie, Gabriella and Timur! Thanks for coming in such wet weather!

Oh sweet Valentine's, what a lovely evening - I'll never forget last night, all the good we got done.

In the news this week:

1. Well done to the long run crew at the weekend led by Frances and Graham.
2. Plus a massive well done to the GG Cross Country Team who finished their first season of the Met League on Saturday.
3. For GG Camden news we are planning a 5th birthday party for us on Thursday 12th April - put it in your diaries now. More details coming soon.

So last night had a 98% chance to rain between 7-8pm (according to Lucy Victor), so we weren't taking any chances with getting wet. Splitting into two teams we were off to help Groundwork and the Homeless Shelter.

A team of 11 of us to meet our old Camden friend Fred who needed some garden work doing for to the national organisation Groundwork. After running 1.5km we met Fred in his van, unfortunately he has a really bad back so our help was even more.

FP with a knife!

The task was to lift, carry and empty 25 bags of compost into 3 planters in Cumberland Market Square Park. Armed with a knife Frances got to work opening the bags as others carried them over. Within 10 minutes we were done and had collected together any of the debris left around the area.

After finishing early we headed for a run to Regents Park inner circle and back to base via parkway.

Jess wrote a cool poem:

Roses are red

Our T-shirts are too

We're soaking wet

But we're here to help you!

Homeless Shelter Task from Pritesh

Seven of us, including first-timer Gabriella who we were very interested to ask..."why a night like this to start?" (turns out it wasn't that bad when she left home), went along to the American International Church on Tottenham Court Road where we were doing our weekly task of getting beds made for the residents that night. Today we had a total of 15 beds to make. Everyone got down to business and apart from the occasional direction from me to take photos and suchlike we got the job done speedily. Rosie had befriended the church cat and had formed such a close bond that she wanted to take the cat home...we did the right thing and the cat stayed and then we headed off into the rain. After failing to decipher a message from PB we ran to meet the others who had long gone so we did an extra little loop, which stuck to the exact planned route, to make it a full 5.5k run for the night. Well done to everyone that came with me!

Sign up next week where we will have another new task helping a School lift compost up stairs!

PB out

Aghh - the dreaded call... "sorry, we've had to cancel the task"

Fourteen awesome GoodGym folk came along to Hammermsmith Fitness and Squash Centre (well done for finding us Alice and Alice) despite the late cancellation of a task.

No task!

We decided that whilst we couldn't do any good tonight we would still get fit and with the help of local GGHF stalwart Jason, we cobbled a nice river run together and even managed to get some heart-pumping fitness in too!

With the chill drawing in we had the intro indoors, we welcomed Alice C and Alice I to GGHF for the first time and explained the plan. Jason, Will and George were going to be our guides tonight and they took us along to the river where we split into a 'slow group' and a 'faster slow group'! Having forgotten to do a headcount and intros we quickly did this before heading on our way!

Headcount

Once we had all assembled at Bishop's Park, our journey taking us along the Thames and past the River Cafe and Craven Cottage, myself, Justine and Jason engineered a fitness session. We split the group and whilst one group performed some exercises (squats, star-jumps, lunges and jump squats) the other group did a short out and back before taking on the exercises! This got everyone worked out and after we had a quick break where we discussed the various benefits of GoodGym outside of doing good and getting fit!

Squat, Star, Lunge...JUMP!

With everyone's breath back we headed back the way we had come! When we got back to base we had a quick stretch down, discussed the impending GoodGym social on Thursday and the HF social on the 24th and then headed home or to the pub!

Thanks everyone for getting involved, and apologies again for the lack of task. We're back to normal next week and painting! Sign up here!

Thanks - Pritesh

p.s. I mentioned a load of things throughout the run last night and there was no good way of communicating that back to you so I'm putting a list of links below:

• The social, this week in Angel - all the details here, it'll be in Stratford next month on Nov 9th!

• GoodGym Race team - Info here and for those wanting to put forward ideas for races for next year go here.

• Info on the GoodGym Europe trip is here. We're heading to Bucharest in May - it will be amazing!

• The Unofficial GG Facebook group - a great place to share training plans, races and see what is going on in the thriving GG community - Remember to state your GG area! Join here.

• GG Hammersmith and Fulham Facebook group is here.

• If you want to know more about TaskForce - best thing is to email me.