12 runners joined me last night and were not put off by the big 10km run we had planned to help paint a classroom at North Primary School!

School budgets are often tight, especially with the amount of time they have to dedicate to extra things such as repainting a class room, so we were delighted to be able to come down and offer our GoodGym power!

With a big run ahead of us we started with a quick head count and shot straight off on our long and very easy to navigate run down the Uxbridge Road. As we ran along we noted running long past where some of our other tasks are and lots of us were running further west of Ealing then we ever had before. I do like to treat you on a Tuesday night! It was definitely a case of just keep going as we made our way 3 miles straight down with no turnings to contend with, luckily it was basically impossible to get lost and I'm happy to say we all arrived without incident!

Glossing over it

We were met by Imran at the school who showed us the room we were going to take on, it was currently an interesting shade of yellow and our job was to gloss over it with a fresh coat of white paint! We had lots of brushes and rollers to use between us and we wasted no time is getting stuck in!

• Shan adopted the hack of turning his GoodGym tee inside out to save any paint mishaps
• Annamaria left with a lovely speckled design on her running top, I've heard this is the height of fashion!
• Steph didn't escape the paint and left with a badge of honour on her GoodGym tee, that's what they are for!

I'll get my coat...

After getting one coat on it was clear that the yellow wasn't going to give up that easily and we'll be coming back in two weeks time to give it another coat! We definitely made a fantastic start and the room was looking brighter already when we left. We finished up with Lionel's life hacks, were we cleaned off the paint brushes and wrapped them in damp cloths and cling film to make sure they were good to use next time round! Just a quick group pose and it was a case of 'keep running up that road', all the way back to the start.

Well done everyone, a long run, a painted classroom and a whole lot of good for a Tuesday evening!

16 runners rounded off their Tuesday evening by running to help The William Hobbayne Centre in Hanwell sort and clean one our their storage areas.

We were joined by not one, not two, but three wonderful new GoodGymers, so a big welcome to Hayley, Maudene and Faith! It was lovely to have lots of new faces amongst the group.

We started with a little warm up and introduction where we spoke about our favorite sporting books and films. Lots of interesting choices and recommendations including the recent climbing documentary film ‘Free Solo’, the running book ‘Eat and Run’ and classics like ‘Cool Runnings’ and ‘The Mighty Ducks’!

Time to make a clean break

With that it was time to run and this week we weaved the back way through to Hanwell where June from the charity was ready in waiting for us. She was armed with lots of sponges and cloths and one very dusty storage area for us to clean up.

We quickly got ourselves organised and started a chain to remove all the boxes from the area for a good hoover and scrub down. Small teams worked to wash and dry everything that came out and boy was it dusty!

Dust cause

It wasn’t long before everything was sparkling and with the area cleaned down it was just a matter of playing storage jenga to fit it all back in! We finished up with June telling us a little bit more about some of what The William Hobbayne Charity does and some of the upcoming things they are working on.

Excitingly, we at GoodGym will be involved with this years Hanwell Hootie and as part of the festival this year there will be a ‘Wall of Sound’ feature. This is an opportunity for charitable organisations, schools and community to present their message about how they support the community and promote the great work they do.

We’ve been given an MDF guitar to decorate and communicate a message about what GoodGym does in the local area, this will be on display at The Hootie for everyone to see, how exciting!

Another run bites the dust

Just a run back to the start to finish off the evening and we were done. Thank you to everyone who came down to give their time for the evening!

Don’t forget we have lots of exciting tasks coming up, as well as our weekly Tuesday group runs there’s also weekend missions and training sessions to get stuck into too!

With the weather much kinder than of late, last night 13 GoodGymers met to help Cultivate London with some woodwork tasks down at their site in Acton!

Two new runners in the mix last night with Tom and Annamaria joining us for the first time, big welcome to them!

A pallet-able task indeed!

Our task last night was to help the wonderful West London social enterprise, Cultivate London, break down, de-nail and sand pallets to be used in their community gardens sites. They will be used for loads of great projects including creating a fruit & veg stall, potting benches, recycling stations and vertical salad walls! As this is a task we love to help with regularly, we thought it would be fun for us to start tallying the slats we process so that we have a target to aim for each time we visit.

Free therapy!

With the task set, everyone got to work hammering away trying to get out the pesky nails, some of which were very stubborn to remove! Once we had a good hoard we set a team to work to start sanding them down to be used in the final product. We all agreed it was an excellent upper body workout and a great way to come a de-stress if you've had a hard day, free therapy for all! Time for the final count and we managed to get 103 pallets de-nailed and made a good start on the sanding process too, now the number to beat for next time is set!

All the single leg squats, all the single leg squats...

Once back at base we did a but of focusing on the ABC's of running, that's agility, balance and co-ordination. Even those who have been running for a long time (myself very much included!) sometimes lack strength in this area so I went through a few exercises you can sneak into your everyday life or tag onto the beginning or end of a run. Completing just a few of these whenever you can could make a big difference to your running! Running is very much a single leg sport, so to really target these exercises for running just do everything on one leg, it's much harder but forces you to really work on the balance and co-ordination instead of just strength!

• Single leg squats
• Single leg calf raises
• Single leg dead lifts
• Single leg clams

With that we were done and dusted and headed to the pub to celebrate a super successful January Challenge where we completed 132 good deeds, had 2 members join the 100 club, one member join the 50 club and ran nearly 1500km between us in Ealing alone! Special mention to Jenni who completed 16 good deeds in January and Michael who completed 13, that's a lot of extra GoodGyming! But overall a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who got involved in any way over the past month, we couldn't make all these amazing things happen without you! If you're keen to see all the heroes leader boards and see how you're doing in the mix, you can check it out here.