31 GoodGymers ran between 5-8km to help Camden Society paint and C4WS make beds

Hey, hello, whatup - that was fun wasn't it! Brilliant night of great people, fun fitness and GOOD tasking. Welcome to newbies - Matt, Amy, Emily, Zahava and Imogen who joined us for the first time last night - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. There is a GoodGym Monthly Social next Thursday at the Square Pig in Holborn, come along it will be full of puns, fun and Pritesh...
2. Well done Beth Hoskins (who started at GG Camden and is basically one of ours) who was the first person ever to reach 500 Good Deeds in GoodGym, she was sent a letter by the Prime Minister and Huffington Post wrote a cool article about her

After an active warm up in the cold January air we split into our teams and got 'gooding'. Chris took a team of 10 to help C4WS at the American International Church make beds for the homeless, over January and March each year we send a team of 10 people weekly to help the shelter with this task - saving them lots of time and effort.

Camden Legend Sophie Hedges wrote a cool haiku about the task:

American Church

Bed for the night, basic right

Fold corners with care

We are going to have a different member each week do a haiku about the bed making - it's an incredibly important task but it's hard to write 10 normal reports on it. Chris' team made quick work of the beds and then ran up to Kentish Town to join us for a last minute cleaning job - smashing 8km overall!

Camden Society Report by PB:

A team of 20 ran to Kentish Town to go help Camden Society, it was 2.5km up there and everyone kept a good pace to our NEW TASK. The Camden Society runs services across London and Oxfordshire. With a reputation for creativity, innovation and enterprise they generate new opportunities for people with disabilities to achieve greater equality. All their services are person-centred, supporting people to develop their lives in whatever ways they choose.

This fantastic charity have 10 sites across London, including 8 cafes, their Head Office and a site which sends out our GoodGym t-shirts! These are all run and serviced by people with learning difficulties - amazing!

Steve is actually an artist

Our tasks for the evening were as follows:

• John and Laurence cleaned the shop windows; front, back and around
• A team of 5 cleaned and scrubbed the walls, doors and services on the downstairs kitchen
• A team of 4 sanded and painted the hallway
• A team of 3 sanded and painted and disabled toilet

Amazing work all! We stayed for 45 minutes and got tons done. Now joined by Team Chris we ate some flapjacks, took a group pic and headed home for a stretch.

Sign up here for next week, three tasks - Abbey, St Mary's & C4WS!

PB out

So here we go another year of amazing GoodGym-ing and here's the first social to really get things going!

Thank you so much to all of you that came out an amazing 43 of you turned out and it was really great to see so many new faces - really hope you had a great time!

Right, the speech itself was long enough and as ever i failed miserably to find a quiet pub so here are all the details (apologies for a bumper report as we cover November, December and January:

The Tables

Distance:

• Nov - James Poole - 399.7km
• Dec - James Poole 543.7km
• Jan - Ben Parkes - 410.3km

Cheers Given:

• Nov - Sarah Moore - 581
• Dec - Sarah Moore - 369
• Jan - Stephen Kirlew - 732

Cheers Received:

• Nov - Deborah Redmond - 189
• Dec - Sarah Moore - 234
• Jan - Patrick Luong - 256

Good Deeds:

• Nov - Beth Hoskins - 18
• Dec - David Guest - 11

• Jan - Patrick Luong- 23

• Apologies from me but no data on those receiving black shirts for 50 and wings for 100 and a few way above that but hopefully that info will be coming up for months to come!

• Finally the winner of the poorly titled 'Most new runners last month' title goes to Lambeth and Lewisham with 34 new runners across their sessions in January - keep it up!

News

• GoodGym goes Nationwide

With Sheffield, York and Birmingham getting going we now have EIGHT areas outside of London with more coming in the next few months and interest being garnered across the country! Keep an eye out for GoodGym mailings about new areas and be sure to tell any friends in new areas to get involved!

• Where's your GoodGym

One thing I have picked up on my travels to GG areas across London is that some area names can be slightly misleading and thus people are missing out on GoodGym fun - if you've got friends and colleagues in these areas be sure to let them know where they meet in case they're missing out just because of a name:

• GG Southwark meet in Peckham
• GG Hounslow meet in Chiswick
• GG Redbridge meet in Wanstead
• GG Brent meet in Willesden Green
• GG Newham meet in Stratford in the Olympic Park ...and don't forget we have areas in Richmond, Ealing and Hammersmith & Fulham

GG Race Team

Do you know about GoodGym Race Team? It’s a UK Athletics affiliated running club that has its own committee and vision but sits alongside GoodGym. If you want to get started with races or improve your current running times or just get a GoodGym singlet then get involved and you'll get £2 off entry to races too! The other thing the Race Team supports is the GG Big Six - the races that we will be championing through the year and you can sign up confident that there will be support and general #RedThunder...for 2017 the races are:

• 11th & 12th March - Larmer Trees Races (10miles, Half, 20miles, Marathon - Trail)

• 14th May - Riga Running Festival (6km, 10km, Half, Marathon - Road)

• 9th July - Bath Two Tunnels (5km, 10km, Half, Marathon, 50km - Road)

• 19th August - Race the Train, Tywyn (3.5miles, 5.5miles, 10km, 14miles - Trail)

• 10th September - New Forest Running Festival (5km, 10km, Half, Marathon - Trail)

• 8th October - Oxford Half Marathon (Half Marathon - Road)

Keep an eye out on the Events page for news of other races but these six will be mentioned a lot!

GoodGym

I'm gonna keep mentioning it, after all, it's what has brought us all together! For all the fun of the socials, racing and all the rest please do keep in mind that we are trying to help as many people as possible and tackle isolation among the elderly! The best way of doing that is to ensure we are DBS checked so we can go on missions and, if possible, join the coach scheme. This doesn't work for everyone so do keep mentioning it to others even if you can't do it yourself. I know most of you know about the different ways to get involved but just in case...you can get involved in group runs, coach runs or the missions - there is generally something for everyone!

Taskforce

The Taskforces were set up back in 2015 and it was a way to give something back to members who were not just showing up to runs but also helping the trainers out and really driving GoodGym forwards to the organisation that exists now. I was lucky enough to have a hand in this back in the early days and as we expand out of London's reach I think it is really important that people are given the opportunity to get involved so I'll be going on about it lots - feel free to contact me and/or speak to your trainer - and I'm sure we will have Taskforces in every area soon making GoodGym even more successful and more importantly even more of what you want it to be!

Marketing

Well despite those cheers, the central team don't just sit there clicking 'cheer' all day! The wheels have been turning on the marketing front and we've seen loads of snaps of the advertising on the Tube, online and in Time Out. If you've seen us, take a pic and get it on twitter, facebook or instagram! Well done to all involved at GG central and well done to those looking so wonderful in all the press snaps...looking at you especially Hazel!

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Right... sorry, that was long! Anyway... I know the only reason you've read this far is to see who got the honour of claiming the INTERNATIONAL PUN OF THE MONTH! Now as you know if you were there on the night we did the IPoM for November, December and January - I'm pretty sure I'll never do that again but for what it's worth here are all your pun related results! So with a huge hand and, just cos it's me, a definition of a pun...ahem; your winners:

Pun of the Year 2016 - Lewisham

• A litter less conversation and a litter more action

A phenomenal debut year for Adele and her SE London team - you got on the BBC, you got great numbers and you were crowned with the pun of the year! Congratulations!

IPoM November - Camden

• Can't Trump this... Hill's winning here

Hitting the political trail Camden came good with their pun... if only real life had listened! Well done to Camden and despite the one vote win there'll be no re-counts here!

IPoM December - Bath

• I tell you what I want, what I willow willow want

Well done to Steph and the gang proving that they love their pop music in Bath and you voters at the social do too it was a close run thing tho as the Spice Girls beat the rather more christmassy 'GoodGym Wenceslas' by one vote!

IPoM January - Camden

• Fir-get Dry January, we're going tree-total

Camden going topical again reflecting many peoples choice to go 'dry' for January, a resounding 18 out of 46 votes - congratulations!

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I think that about covers the wonderful first social of the month - I hope everyone had a great time and we'll see you next month in Lewisham on the 2nd March as we prepare to 'go on tour' every other month this year!

As ever please do contact me with feedback or things you might want to see/hear on the night - I'm merely the pawn in your social game - direct me as you wish! Outlying boroughs get in touch if you wanna be the 'tour' destination for May!

Thanks again, it'd be nothing without your monthly efforts and presence on the night!

Pritesh

p.s. As some of you know there is an unofficial GG facebook group, it's run by myself and Paul Bown, click here if you want to join - it's a great place to hear about races, socials, training runs and other things that come out of a community having a chatter!

Back and ready for action this week were Simon, Andy and Deepa. And joining them on her first trip to GoodGym was Lily, who'd spotted one of GoodGym's tube ads on the Victoria Line. Welcome, Lily.

Our task this week was aother 2.5k run over to Ealing Road Baptist Church for more clearing. A small and dusty room that was filled with... pretty much evrything you could imagine, had to be cleared out.

We set about the task, removing pots of paint, pumps, tools, shelving brackets, poles, magazines, old books, tool boxes, curtains, clocks, lightbulbs, screws, brick mortar and lots and lots of dust.

Then after shifting a few fold-up tables we were done.

Deepa took us through the "Sun Salutation" yoga moves again, Roger gave us an assortment of food to take home (tuna, Indian sweets, Jaffa Cakes, biscuits, and a pot-noodle-wannabe) and we were off.

En route we conducted a little experiment to work out if health food or junk food was better for running. The test was a four-person relay first using a tin of tuna as the baton, then using a pot noodle as a baton. Tuna time came to 1 minute exactly, whereas pot noodle saw us smash that with 55 seconds.

There you have it. Eat junk and prosper.

Thank you Roger for hosting again.

We are back next week for more of the same.

See you there,
Simon