11 Westminster GoodGymers ran 5k to St Andrews Youth Club to pack away all the kit from the Kit car festival the club competed in last week!

Arriving into the ever energetic St Andrews Youth Club after a 2.5k run to the buzz of games night!

Making our way into the garage to find the sea of everything imaginable you could find in a youth Club piled high and everywhere. All the stuff from the kit car racing needed ordering, boxing up and tidying away.

We took everything out, boxed it up then found a new improved and ordered home for the stuff.

The new garage order allowing things to be found, safe and tidy our job was complete.

A quick dash back to base got us home dead on 8 with a top session complete!!

See you next week for for our visit to Open Age Charity to get Westminster’s older community active and social.

Joel

9 GoodGym Westminster runners ran 7k to Little Venice to pick up 8 buckets full of recycling along the canal to celebrate GoodGym’s 10th Birthday!! #GG10

A lovely evening in London Town for our Wednesday adventures as we glided down 3.5k on Little Venice with a couple of stops to fly the GG flag along the way.

Big shout out to Elena for her first GG run and a massive congratulations to Tom for reaching to Magical 50 GoodDeed milestone.

Arriving at the Canal and River Trust HQ where we grabbed our kit and headed out to rid the canal of as much recycling as possible for the evening! We limited the rubbish collection as the bins were way over flowing and really focused our efforts on recyclables as there was a handy line of recycling bins we could use.

Working our way West we found plenty of plastics, bottles and cans and even managed to do a on the grab sort of the recycling.

Great to be on the canal path as the sun set on a lovely September day doing our bit to help this beautiful stretch of water looking at its best!

35 minutes of grabbing, sorting and recycling away had us ready for the off. With the hands sanitised and kit put away we runoff as the darkness fell.

Getting back to base with a good workout complete and a top task in the bag we stretched out and head off into the night!

Thanks for coming along and hope to see you next week for our visit to St Andrews youth Club!!

Joel

Doing good, running hard is undoubtedly the best cure for any hump day blues and last night GoodGym Westminster made sure we turned Wednesday red!

After assembling at the New Balance flagship store, we welcomed Alice & Steve to the GG Westminster family, go ahead and give them a cheer

NEWS

• GoodGym is about to celebrate its 10th birthday and to mark the occasion a book is being produced with the theme of 'What GoodGym means to me’ It would be great to have your contribution to this. Let everyone know what GoodGym means to you here

• Have you heard the latest ‘Reasons to be cheerful’ podcast? It has no other than GoodGym's very own Ivo Gormley as a guest and is definitely worth a listen, head here to listen now

TRAINING NEWS

• Anyone looking for a longer group run, The next monthly long run is going to be a tour of the Dockland area, which takes place on the 25th August. There are 3 distance options, 26km, 16km, 10km, details and sign up here

RACE TEAM NEWS

• GoodGym has some £10 community entry places for the Big Half taking place on Sunday 1st March 2020. To enter the ballot for a place please email bighalf@goodgym.org by Friday 23rd August. Successful applicants will be informed the following week.

DO GOOD & GET FIT

This weeks tasks was helping out at One Big Family in Victoria. One Big Family is a charity that supports homeless people in the Westminster community by providing a weekly outdoor soup kitchen offering hot food, clothing, toiletries, essentials, food parcels and advice. Our task this week was sorting through some storage sheds that are unfortunately being repossessed

Rain was pouring as we left the New Balance store but that wasn’t enough to put us off from the task ahead. We avoided busy Oxford Street and took to a nearby side street to work through a series of low impact warm up drills, which was wrapped up with a quick poll on everyone’s favourite thing to do on a rainy day

We set off weaving in and out of pedestrians, tourists and bikes and before long we were racing our way through Green Park and taking in the sights of Buckingham Palace. With swift progress, we took the final stretch through Victoria and with 3.4km on the clock and arriving at our destination raring to go

On arrival we were greeted by Mike and his team and after a short brief we quickly got to work. Mike tasked us with separating all the clothing, bedding and food from the brick-a-brac that was in the storage unit and to then relocating the clothing, bedding and food to the nearby cabin. When the storage unit was opened, we realised the enormous task that was ahead of us. Completely unfazed and in true GG fashion we rolled up our sleeves and 30 mins later the storage unit was transformed, with all the clothing, bedding and food removed and relocated. Well done team, awesome work!

All that was left was the remaining 3.4km back to base, which we dispatched in no time at all.

Once back in the warm and dry New Balance store we went through some stretches and reflected on our achievements for the night

So, we braved the rain, smashed our task and ran a total distance of 6.8km. Amazing work all round team Westminster!!

COMING UP

Joel returns next week to lead us to Little Venice for a canal clear up, sign up here

Thank you for having me it was an absolute pleasure taking in the sites and landmarks of Westminster with you all, until next time...

Happy running