It was all Gogh, Gogh, Gogh at GoodGym H&F as 22 GoodGym'ers ran 3km to whiten up a room!

The heavens absolutely opened half an hour before we were due to head off on our group run and we all feared the worst, a wet and soggy run! We seemed to have luck on our side tonight, we had an indoor task and the GoodGym gods had worked their magic to hold off the rain for a few hours.

A big welcome along to Michele who joined us for her first GoodGym run, and welcome along to our tourists tonight, JP, Courtney and Michelle. Lovely to have you all along! Thank you as always to my regulars who come whatever the weather....rain, wind, storms....hopefully we'll have some sun soon!

With everyone geared up and ready we headed outside to our nice and dry warm-up spot where we ran through the intros and a round-up of the week's news.

News, news, news

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

2. Last Saturday of the month Community Mission with Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers. For all the details of the session on Saturday 29th February, click 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.

4. GoodGym Games 2020 - Oxford will be hosting this year! It will take place on the famous Sir Roger Bannister Running Track on Saturday 18th July. If you've not heard of the GoodGym Games then check out the report from last year.

Another nifty fifty 5️⃣0️⃣!

A big well done to Cookie for reaching his 50th good deed tonight! Not content with doing one good deed, he snuck in an extra good deed pre-group run to help move a hospital bed, furniture and fix a TV up in Camden. Top work! 🙌

No pain(t), no gain

With the warm-up complete and Stravas set we were ready to head off on our short 1.6km run down to our task tonight at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, with Lucy kindly backmarking. En route there was a short group wall sit to enable everyone to re-group as we headed down off the main road. As the traffic lights changed we jumped up at the chance to cross the busy road as a group. Biscuits took the lead as we headed down the back streets near Barons Court tube station.

Another set of traffic lights against us allowed us to regroup a final time before we headed down the correct left turn - this was the third time I'd lead the group to Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and the first time we hadn't taken an unplanned scenic detour around the dead end that runs paraellel to West Kensington tube station....as they say, third time lucky! 😬

On the Monet

It wasn't long before we arrived at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and were warmly welcomed in by Sara and Peggie. With the group gathered around, Sara briefly explained the vast range activities and engagment events that are provided at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall for the community – these include low cost yoga, meal provision from surplus food and hosting of parties.

Three years ago, GoodGym H&F group had visited and transformed the green walls of the main hall from green to white - Sarah and Biscuits fondly remember this as it was their first good task! Not the time to get emulsional though... Last year we returned and gave the main hall a fresh coat of white paint, however, with the main hall being so well used over the year the walls were now bearing some very visible dirt, scuffs and stains that needed a bit of GoodGym painting love.

Time to roll with it!

Tonight's task was simple, but big, repaint the main hall area walls with a nice fresh coat of white paint, a slightly different white - but, obviously it was hard to tell! With Sara and Peggie providing a wonderful selection of rollers, paint brushes and trays, the team quickly divided up and began distributing the white paint into the trays ready to tackle the big painting challenge. With so many helping hands tonight, Aine, Courtney and Cookie headed to the hallway to finish the tops of the walls that had been missed last time along with some fresh paint on the walls.

Painting down to a fine art!

Biscuits lived up to his name and tracked down the biscuits and chocolates, offering them out to the team as they kept rolling on with the painting, all GoodGym rollmodels.

Drop it like its squat

Brush hour

Paints and ladders

Many went up ladders, under ladders and stood on chairs to ensure that no hard to reach spots were missed. With so many pairs of hands quickly and efficiently painting the main hall walls and skirting boards, it wasn't long before everything had been painted and the team were spotting bits of the wall where the paint had dried, rather than been missed!

With a small amount of paint remaining the team decided to try and get the toilets painted as well. In slightly cosy conditions, JP, Chris and Annabelle began painting the walls in one toilet while Catriona, Beth, Andrew and Annabel began painting the walls in the other disabled toilet. As we neared the end of paint and time, many of us remembered that this was what had happened last time, and why there was still remnants of green paint at the top of the walls 🙈.

The walls are all white now

As always, time flew, and not wanting to leave the toilets looking too unfinished the teams pushed on for a few additional minutes while Sarah, Maddy, Biscuits, and Tom started on the washing up of all the painting equipment. We finally called time and gathered for the team photo with the ever smiley, Sara and Peggie. The photo was wonderfully choreographed by Lucy and Speedy and was complete with ladders and the everyone making a lovely 'heart' symbol in support of GoodGym's 'Give it Heart' theme for this month.

Best spuddies

Sara and Peggie kindly offered the group some potatoes to take home in canvas bags, and Cookie tapped into a fabulous 'market seller' who was selling "lovely potatoes, nice and cheap, get 'em before they're all gone!". With everyone 'tatoed up we all said our thank yous and goodbyes and began our run back to base.

As we stopped at the crossing, the great escape occured with a potato rolling away before being quickly retrieved. On the home straight the team stopped for a voluntarily wall sit - two wall sits in one night, double the building of isometric strength!

It wasn't long before we all arrived back and were stretching off. Lucy had been very eagle-eyed and spotted it was Cookie's 50th so had baked some amazing banana and carrot cake, freshly made with bananas saved from City Harvest! (check out the recipe, it's the last in the long photo reel and in the WhatsApp group!).

Excellent work tonight all, hope you all had fun! By my calculations, 21 runners working for 45 minutes adds up to over 15 hours of work!

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, remember it's Shrove Tuesday!

It was all Gogh, Gogh, Gogh again as 24 GoodGym'ers ran 3km to white up a room!

On an unseasonably warm and Spring-like February evening - the kind of weather where everyone quickly locates their GoodGym t-shirts and shorts! - a fantastic 23 smiling GoodGym'ers greeted me at the Better Gym to run and do good. A big welcome to our 2 runderful new runners Libby and Sarah who joined us for their first GoodGym run, and welcome back to self-professed 'fair weather runner' Luis. It was also lovely to see so many runners back for their second and third runs, and of course my fab regulars - thank you all for coming along!

With everyone present and correct we all headed outside to our warm-up spot where I ran through a quick intro and round-up of the week's news.

News, news, news

1) Community Missions - Up for a weekend community mission? No DBS check is required for a community mission.

• Sat 2nd March from 12pm - help sort food donations for City Harvest in Acton, sign up here.
• Sat 9th March from 10.30am - help finish sort clothes donations for St Mungo's Reconnection Post in Hammersmith, sign up here.

2) Sunday 3rd March - Long Runs - Tower Hamlets Run Leader, Simon is leading a 21km run along stages 6 & 7 of the Capital Ring. For all the details and to sign up, click here. There is also talk of H&F long run as well, keep an eye on the WhatsApp group for details!

3) Volunteering opportunities - If you volunteer for either the Adidas City Runs 1 hour on Sun 7th April or the Hackney Half on Sun 19th May, you'll have a great day out cheering on fellow runners and earn yourself some nice freebies that include free entry to a future race, a t-shirt, and possibly even some jelly babies!

The 'artist part was finding the way...

With the news and intros complete we did a name and number count followed by a quick pulse raising warm-up and some dynamic stretches, that of course included some 'shooing of the chickens' and closing of the gate, all in the wrong order! With the warm-up complete and Stravas set, we were ready to head off on our short 1.6km run down to our task tonight at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, with Jason as always being the trusty backmarker. Along the way there was a short group wall sit to enable everyone to re-group as we headed down off the main road. In a complete déjà vu of our last run to Gibbs Green Tenants Hall I took the group on a minor 'scenic' detour around the back of West Kensington tube station - don't say I don't treat you all to the sights of H&F team!

Water great place to come

It wasn't long before we arrived at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and were warmly welcomed in by Sara and Peggie. Sara and Peggie had kindly provided water for the group which was gratefully welcomed. As the group rehydrated Sara briefly explained the vast range activities and engagment events that are provided at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall for the community – this ranged from low cost yoga to providing meals from surplus food.

The walls are all white now

Two years ago the group had visited and transformed the green walls of the main hall from green to white, however, over the years the space has been incredibly well used and as result was bearing some very visible dirt, scuffs and stains that needed a bit of GoodGym painting love. Tonight's task was simple, but big, repaint the main hall area walls with a nice fresh coat of white paint. With Sara and Peggie providing a wonderful selection of rollers, paint brushes and trays, the team quickly divided up and began distributing the white paint into the trays ready to tackle the big painting challenge.

Blinded by the white!

Many went up ladders, under ladders or even stood on chairs to ensure that no hard to reach spots were missed. With so many pairs of hands quickly and efficiently painting the walls and skirting boards, it wasn't long before the area that Sara and Peggie had originally prepped with ground sheets for us to paint, so as to protect their newly washed and cleaned floors, needed to be extended out a lot further and wider.

As always the half an hour quickly passed, and not wanting to leave the main hall looking unfinished the group pushed on for a few additional minutes until most of the walls were all completed, and there was no paint left to paint with! With the painting completed, equipment washed, and everyone fed and rehydrated the group posed for a fabulous 'jazz hands' group photo with the ever smiling, Sara and Peggie. We all said our thank yous and goodbyes as we headed outside to the nice grassy area for some quick fitness-based games. After enjoying the Sally squats so much a few weeks ago, Tom had requested more squats and so as to be fair to the whole group I ensured that everyone got to do lots of squats tonight - big thank you to Tom!

Off in squat pursuit

We started off with a fun but tough game of championship knee tag, with lots of squat action and good tactical game play on display - well done to those who were victorious! Next up was a game of squat, squat, goose, where it transpired that many had never played the childhood classic of duck, duck, goose - what madness! After ironing out the rules we had a quick few rounds, all of which were very closely run. With the squat fix not quite acquired we finished off with three exercises to improve our strength, flexibility and balance: pistol squats, alternating supermans and squat thrusts. Great effort all!

Fitness session complete we all began the short run back to base for a cool down and stretch. Cool down and stretches complete we all headed off home our separate ways, with some going via the pub for the monthly social. Excellent work tonight all, hope you all had fun and hope to see you all again soon!

Next week we're heading back to Flora Gardens Primary School to continue our big painting challenge task, sign up for next week's run here. Have a great week!

On another scorcher of a Tuesday evening in H&F a fantastic ‘two little ducks’ 22 GoodGym-ers turned up to run and help out at tonight’s painting task at Gibbs Green Tenant Hall. A big welcome to the 5 lovely new runners Fiona, Summer, Lucy, Claire and Luke on their first GoodGym run, it was brilliant having you along! It was great to also see Grant along on his second group run fresh from his strong fork break last week, to have Remy from GG Hounslow & Nurjehan from GG Haringey doing some GoodGym tourism; and from a personal perspective it was fab to see so many friendly and familiar faces back from last week’s group run.

Before we headed outside we had a brief introduction and round-up of the news from the week…

1. 85 GoodGymers attended the annual GoodGym Shindig in Stratford-upon-Avon at the weekend. Big well done to Catriona who got a parkrun PB!
2. The monthly GoodGym Long Run for August will be led by the ace Dom Tooze, it will be on the 25th August and will be a 21km route from Hampton Court to Battersea Arts Centre – sign up here.
3. The final three big GoodGym races of the year will be the White Star Running - East Farm Races down in Dorset on the August Bank Holiday, the Rutland Marathon & Half Marathon in September and the Yorkshire Marathon and 10 Mile race in October.
4. AND...despite trying to keep it on the down-low, Johnny completed his first coach visit at the beginning of the week.

No heat strokes in H&F

Following a pulse-raising warm-up which again included my favourite ‘numbers game’ and Polly’s favourite ‘shooing the chickens’ stretch we did a quick name and number count along with everyone’s favourite holiday destinations –– Thailand was popular with a few, along with mentions for Italy, Ireland, Ecuador, India and other exotic locations - though I'm not sure many of them beat Costa del Hammersmith and Fulham at the moment!

Nicely warmed-up the team set off on the short 1.3km run down to Gibbs Green Tenants Hall with Jason as always being the trusty backmarker. Along the way there was group wall sit to enable everyone to re-group as we headed down off the main road. In a complete déjà vu of last week the ‘very short’ 1.3km run down to the task ended up being a slightly longer exploratory 2km run around the West Kensington area due to some postcode confusion...the morale of the story being never rely on Google maps and always listen to and follow Jason!!

Navigational con-artist

Once the correct postcode was acquired and with Jason now expertly leading the way the group arrived at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and were welcomed at the entrance by Peggie and Sara. Peggie and Sara had kindly provided water for the group which was gratefully welcomed, as the group rehydrated they briefly explained the vast range of activities and opportunities that occur at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall for the community – this ranged from yoga to providing meals from surplus food.

It's all white now, it's all white now

The task brief tonight was to paint the bathrooms, kitchen and hallway of Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, a nice 'Changing Rooms' style green to a white/cream colour makeover in all the rooms. While some of the team began the prep work on the walls, Jesse resourcefully found a tool from outside that was ideal to stir the paint before he began filling up all the paint trays.

Increasing self-es-steam in the Gibbs Green Tenants Hall sauna, je l'aime chaud!

The group split into the four rooms that needed painiting: the bathroom, toilet, kitchen and hallway and everyone armed themselves with either a roller or paint brush. The group made quick work of painting all the walls and it wasn't long before there was a marked improvement. However, 22 GoodGymers in a small enclosed space quickly resulted in a sauna-esk environment with many sweat beads appearing….a free sauna for all! Despite the space constrictions the group worked like a well oil-machine talking as they painted both the walls and themselves - Will's & Luke's red shirt were no longer predominantly red and Johnny achieved a nice circular roller branding from Claire!

Monet can't buy you love, just Rembrandt that

As always the half an hour quickly passed and not wanting to leave the job unfinished the group pushed on for a few additional minutes until the walls were all completed! With all the painting completed and everyone rehydrated the group posed for a quick post-task group photo outside Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, with Peggie and Sara, before we both said our thank yous and goodbyes, and the group began the short (actually short this time!) 1.7km run back to base for a quick sprint technique session.

ALPS! Snow joke

The group split into two teams and were worked on their sprint technique over 20m focusing on the ALPS!..... A - Arms L - Legs P - Posture and S - Surprise!

There was some perfect sprinting techniques displayed and the surprise element was that both groups were running to a bag of Maoam for a small sugary treat to focus the minds on the sprinting and boost energy levels following all their hard work in the heat! Of course, one or two bended the rules (naming no names Jason) and stole the entire bag!

With the quick sprint session completed, Maoam consumed – turns out one way to keep a group quiet when asking questions is Maoam! - a cool down and stretch completed we all said our goodbyes for another week and gave Ellie and Anders a last round of applause on their last H&F group runs...for now - it's been wonderful having you along, all the best guys!

Thanks for having me again and for all your hard work at the task. All of you were totally ace! Again, apologies for the lack of navigational expertise, I shall crack it next time! (fingers crossed!). Have a fantastic week and hopefully see you in a couple of weeks.

Next week’s task is leafletting for Acknowledging Youth and will be led by the 'well great' Brent Trainer, Pritesh – sign-up here!

3 Thorns Down - Hack and run

This week's run broke a record for the amount of new people along on my watch! They even out numbered the regulars. Welcome Rebecca, Anil, Athene, Jules, Emma & Claire.

Do the fox trot

We started off the night talking about the different ways to do Goodgym, our running total on the January Challenge and then the hilarity of multiple health and safety mitigations for our task including foxes, darkness, thorns and pot holes. After a head count took us to 13 people, we headed outside to do a dynamic warm up.

Welcome to the bramble scramble

Our task for the night was to revisit for a third time a garden in Fulham. The elderly residents at this council owned property were no longer able to handle the garden and as a result enormous brambles had taken over. We had been asked to help chop them back. Each time we’ve visited the gang have got a vast amount done in a short amount of time. Working really well as a team, swapping tools and taking turns holding the batlights for the others to see. Once our time slot was up, we grabbed a team photo and headed on our way.

Ian, the housing manager from the council, who had arranged for our visit said "we can't thank you enough for you effort and time. It's made a massive difference”.

Whistle workout

On the journey back we added an extra kilometre to the run by going by the river. Plus to warm us up and give our legs a good workout we played Indian file. Each time the whistle was blown, the runner at the back of the group had to speed up to the front and then set a comfortable pace.

Once back at base, we did some static stretches to cool down and had a reminder about the social after the following week's run.

The evening started with the usual welcome speech, plus news of the next social at Wagamama on 23rd Jan (more details to come) and our January Challenge total so far 13 Good Deeds (target 70 Deeds) and 185km (target 200km).

For our task, we were back to a large garden on Fulham roads nice 2.5k away. The elderly tenants in the flats were no longer able to maintain the garden and it had become completely over grown. We had been asked by a local housing manager at the council to come and tackle the mountains of brambles.

We had visited the task for the first time on Saturday for a starter session in the light. It was a different ballgame in the dark, although thanks to most runners having headtorches and my batlights, we managed to see what we were doing quite easily and not get snagged by the horns.

The team cleared an amazing amount in the 30 minutes, even revealing a hidden staircase and raised patio. We'll be back again next week for the last time to chop back the last of the bushes.

After a final group photo we and ran back via the river. Stopping on the way to do some technique work. The focus this week was on arms - keeping our hands unclenched, arms at 90' angle going socket to pocket and not letting our arms cross our bodies when we run. The run back via the river added 3.3km to the overall run rounding us nicely to 6km in total.

We started the morning off by joining the crowds at Fulham Palace Park Run. It was a nice fresh morning for a run and the sun was shining. I did a short speech to the 300 strong crowd about Goodgym and invited anyone to join us for the Starter session afterwards.

After the run we met Jules, Vicky and Liv who had come along for their first H&F group run. Then a group of 7 of us waved good by to Will who’d just joined us to do Park Run (and get a PB) and we headed off down the road to the day’s task.

We had been asked to help hack back some massively overgrown brambles and bushes in a garden. The council property's elderly residents hadn’t been able to tend the garden in a long time due to illness.

We met Ian, the property manager at the house - he had brought lots of tools and gloves for us to use. The gang grab gloves and shears and got stuck in straight away .and then some thorns got stuck into Jason straight away too. Oops.

45 minutes later the team had made a massive dent in the brambles that had covered half the garden. We’ll be heading back there for the next two Tuesday group runs.

After a group photo with Ian we headed off towards our usual starting location via the river. 3.7k later, we arrived at the Better Gym and did some final warm-down stretches.