It was a beautiful evening to have a short jog into town and meet The Ideas Hub for another walk & talk mission.

We met some new people and had a slow mooch towards Oaklands park to shake things up after our gym session in Admirals park last month.

It was decider that the weather right now is mostly lovely (apart from the odd shower) but that November is definitely not ok and I think we can all agree with that.

As we hit the park we met a great big greyhound, perhaps a Labrador (should have taken pictures) and a Romanian rescue. Many ear scratches were had and I think we should make it a side mission to meet as many dogs as we can while good-deeding.

The museum was closed but it sounds like a few of the group might head back to check it out soon and hopefully enjoy some more sunshine in the park over the weekend.

See you at parkrun on Saturday! and keep an eye on your handbags.

Only 7 of us met at the gym last night but we doubled in numbers for maybe one of our biggest groups (?) to hang out with The Ideas Hub and friends in the park.

Richard made a surprise appearance, spotted Mohammed maybe doing some warmup laps before 6.30. Leah provided mobile security services (the car boot) and Rich was very happy to talk about his new shoes to someone other than poor Jane. Martin arrived and we were all officially early to set off for a loop of the park before 6.45.

At the park we found Fay and Sallyann and waited for Edith from the Ideas Hub.

The plan was to chat and have fun with some people who have recently moved to town and want to practice English where it might not be their first (or second!) language. It was clear that football is universal, and there was some light jesting about who is currently losing to who while we walked to the gym equipment in Admirals park for a very serious and structured work out.

And by that I obviously mean have a mess about.

The plan is to do some more of these going forward, so if you want to show us how many chin-ups you can do or just have a wiggle on the surfer, come and have a chat!

We started our Wednesday evening with our first group attempt at Beat the Street - it started out with military precision, but it all slowed down a bit whilst we tried to get the app to work. David definitely had the right idea with the card to tap instead, and Rich somehow ended up as IT support.

After our convoluted journey to fit in four Beat the Street boxes, we made it to the task and met our host and Sallyann who had been on her own Beat the Street journey en route to the task.

We were shown the white Community Wall to paint, and the blue paint to use. In less than 20 minutes, the wall was done! David, Erin, Jenny, Richard and Sallyann turned the wall blue in no time, whilst Andy and Jess (in her own painting shirt) reached the tough spots at the top.

With no washing up to be done, we had time for the second part of the task, which was edging another wall in blue. Rich and Angela set up and project managed, until Russell painted the wrong side of the tape, requiring a hasty wipe with a tea towel (which went better than we all expected). Richard and Leanne got to those hard to reach corners, getting this part of the task done in no time at all! Joe got some great action shots, showing the whole group hard at work and the wall in various stages of blue.

After showing how much we can do in a short space of time with a bit less chatting, we headed back for another round of Beat the Street, and then most of us got changed and went to enjoy our curry. I think we'll all be back to Balti King again with our 50% off vouchers!

See some of you on Sunday for the run!

Laurie

After being dazzled by Andy's festive t-shirt and Russell's festive Lidl hat, we did a squat-free warm up (especially for Martin) and made our way to Meadgate.

We found Fay and Sallyann waiting with the Grinch on the corner of Meadgate, and made a start on leafletting. Whilst leafletting, we found out that it was Russell's 50th good deed, and that he recently got engaged, so double congratulations to Russell, and a black tshirt will be in the post soon.

Everyone was so dazzled by the various Christmas lights on houses that we got separated into two groups for most of the run, only meeting back up at the end for our farewells! David's photo to the group unsurprisingly didn't help the other group to locate us.

Tonight was Martin's 25th good deed, and Jess's 8th, so we're hoping to see a couple more 50th's next year from at least these two new members!

Great effort everyone for our last good deed of 2023, with 8.5-ish km for the runners, and a huge amount of leaflets delivered for Farleigh, The Art Place, and the YMCA.

Thanks everyone for a great year, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2024. We've got the January challenge coming up, so please remember to make sure your Strava is linked to your GoodGym account.

See you all soon

Laurie

First of all thank you to Fay for the run pun :-))

5 of us managed to get out on a Wednesday evening to help post leaflet bundles around the mean streets of Chelmsford.

With Jess "running" late (get it) and Fay meeting us with the leaflets Joel, Andy and myself decided to keep warm while we waited and do some squats. We must have done at least 287,726 by the time Jess arrived ( I promise (( wink emoji)) ).

Then we set off into the night with head torches blazing the way until we arrived in the Westlands estate and met Fay with some excellently bundled leaflets ready for us to post.

And so we did, and actually managed to post all the bundles we had and even went to our extra individual leaflets until we arrived back where we started.

With a quick goodbye to Fay we set back off to warm up and get back to HQ ASAP.

Some of us will be partaking in a 12km run this weekend, wish us luck and then it will be out for our annual Xmas meal and to celebrate the year past ( there maybe some awards)

Next week we will be posting more leaflets in the Meadgate area

Thanks all for coming

Run Happy

Rich

We were pleased to meet up on a dry evening, to see Charlie and Iris for the second time in one week, and to see Doug for the first time in a while.

Charlie and Fay set off on their walk to our leafletting destination, so Joel led us on a slightly longer route with the aim of us all arriving at a similar time. We reconvened and also met Angela, and proceeded to do a much more rushed and inferior job of folding the leaflets than we've become accustomed to.

Thankfully we didn't lose Jess down one of the long dark driveways, we got an accidental selfie fromDavid, and we completed just over 7km by the time we got back from our deviated route.

Whilst run/walking and leafletting, we discussed our disappointing effort at the quiz on Sunday, Jenny's inadvertent following of her neighbour, GoodGym's new night awareness training for all men who attend GoodGym sessions, and our upcoming events, which you can find here.

The Christmas social venue will be Taste of Italy. The breakfast venue after our volunteering at parkrun on the 25th of November is still undecided, and we'll be going to Andy's old favourite Wetherspoons if we don't choose something else.

See you all soon,

Laurie