19 runners deliver 100 posters for CoHoC

We gathered together for our longest run to date. Sue and Lucy had completed the Chelmsford Marathon on Sunday, and Tav the Greenwich 10k. All had had very successful races and were looking forward to a gentle run to help ease their aching muscles.

In our pre-run briefing, we learnt about Colchester Hospitals Charity, and how they are raising money for the Time Garden - a garden for End of Life Patients at Colchester Hospital. Whilst many of our tasks involve gardening, and we will no doubt be called in to help maintain the Time Garden, Wednesday's task involved delivering posters to the businesses on Whitehall Industrial Estate.

I made sure to mention the risk of paper cuts in the pre-run risk assessment, and then proceeded to demonstrate that risk by getting a paper cut whilst putting the posters in my backpack!

Genius!

The posters were to advertise the Santa Run in Castle Park, a great event, and I'm sure some of us will take part.

We made the longer run to Whitehall Industrial Estate, and regrouped to come up with a plan to cover the area. We split in half taking opposite sides of the road. Unfortunately, parts of the industrial estate were locked and we couldn't deliver posters to them. In addition, some places didn't have post boxes. But, we made sure that those that did have delivery slots were adorned with a lovely poster!

We got 100 posters delivered in 15 minutes actually it was more like 17 but still good going, it would have taken one or two people much longer than that.

After we'd finished the task, half of us ran back to Leisure World, lead by Lucy, and half of us ran to the New Inn pub for our monthly social. This was a welcome change of scene organised by Ian. I think everyone was really impressed by the good value and good quality food, as well as being able to move onto cozy sofas after we'd finished eating.

Well done every one!

Run Report by Angela Isherwood

Next week, same task, different location - we'll be running up to Severalls to deliver more posters - an even longer run than this week. Sign up here

4 awesome Greenwich runners ran over 5km to spread the word about the Big Bike Ride in aid of the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice

Last night we were joined by Stacey who came on a few runs earlier in the year and is now back woohoo! Welcome back Stacie! It was lovely to meet you! We also had the lovely Simona back after a few weeks off and brilliant Ben and his head torch!

We did a little warm up and got going relatively quickly as we had a lot of leaflets to get through! Even if we were to only deliver half of them it would have been a success but we had quite a bit of time so I was hopeful! So we set off towards Maze Hill station. There is a good cluster of residential streets around there and the plan was to hit as many as possible in the 45 minutes we had. So off they went, running between each house.. AMAZING! Good interval training right there!

There were some pretty annoying post boxes. Those ones with the brushes in are a real pain and the ones really low down on the floor as well. Ben and I got stuck on the high side of the road for a good 5 minutes with each door having a flight of stairs leading up to it! What a workout! And then the houses with the gates... urgh! #postmanproblems.

After 15 minutes everyone's flyer pile was noticeably smaller, and the end was in sight! Just a few more houses to go! Simona struck gold with a block of flats with all of the postboxes on the outside.. Nice one! A few minutes later and they were all cleared! Amazing! We took a group photo and headed back for the fitness session.

Even though we were running and walking the whole time, it was at quite a nice chilled pace so we finished off by a little track workout! We did 5 sets of 30 seconds at 80-90% effort and 30 seconds rest in between and the idea was to run further round the track each time. We used the quad back at the college which made a pretty good makeshift track! This is a pretty hard workout but everyone absolute nailed it!

Really well done guys, hopefully the event will have lots of attendees now! Thanks so much for all your hard work and see you next week!

On a lovely Wednesday evening 23 GoodGymers ran between 4-10km, delivered leaflets and did some DIY.

Wow lots of newcomers to GoodGym, welcome to Kat, Lucy, Mara, Sylwia, Rosie and Frederic. Fantastic to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. GG monthly drinks, an opportunity for everyone from GoodGym to meet up, is on Thursday 6th October (Pritesh's birthday), sign up here
2. Well done to Danica who completed Richmond Half Marathon on Sunday in 1.59.29 - completing her sub-2 hour goal. Well done #proud.
3. Also well done to Steve Moody for doing Hull Marathon at the weekend, he is planning to do a marathon a month between now and April, amazing!

Our tasks this week were to help Abbey Community Centre spread the word of their amazing work through leafleting and doing some DIY for C4WS, a national homeless charity.

DIY Run Report:

After a game of tag we did a short run to C4WS led by the wonderful Sophie Hedges, arriving to find a cabinet and desk to put together.

Ikea!

With Ikea instructions, great minds, allen keys, and focused hands we were sure to complete the task. We lacked a little space in the room so five of us headed for a run around the block while the other 10 split into teams, with Polly in overall charge, putting the furniture together.

With a swap of DIYers and runners we were only getting closer to finishing the mammoth task. Boom the cabinet was first to be put together, after a group pic 10 people headed to Russell Square while five team members stayed to continue the finishing the job.

We've done the Good now for the GYM!

Intervals - this weeks fitness session was based around a PYRAMID, using time as our tool. It went something like this:

• 1 min fast
• 1 min slow
• 2 min fast
• 2 min slow
• 1 min fast
• 1 min slow

Everyone did very well and really smashed the fitness session!

Meanwhile the DIYers continued to put together the table, with Steve, Arnulfo and Polly staying until 8.45pm! #commitment #good

Leaflet report written by Pritesh:

Tonight I had seven hardy runners joining me on my favourite run up to Abbey Community Centre. It was a great little group and we kept a good pace (including the ‘stomp’ up Primrose Hill) and had some nice chats about what we’d been up to over the summer and various race plans for the winter too.

Tower Block Climb!

We weren’t sure if there’d been a ‘cock-up’ as we arrived at the community centre as there seemed to be no lights on but Laura was awaiting us and was just saving some energy. Tonight’s task was some leaflet distribution in two nearby tower blocks to let the residents know about the various upcoming activities at the community centre. We had a 102 flats in each tower block and so we split into two teams (“How about girls vs boys?”) and Laura then led us out to the blocks.

Girls vs boys

The girls took on ‘Casterbridge’ and the boys ‘Snowman’, yup there really is a Snowman House – we suggested Steve might want to consider a new place here so he could have the address ‘Steve Coman, Snowman…’ Both teams went hard at the task but in the end the boys prevailed and were first back to the community centre. The girls were not far behind and Laura then showed us the mural that has gone up (we whitewashed the walls on a previous task so great to see the outcome) in the kids playground. There was some discussion over whether the boys might’ve taken the lift but the evidence was inconclusive and so thoughts turned to the pun…with ‘Snowman’ and ‘Thomas Hardy’ as possible references we thought we’d be in for a jackpot… we came up with nothing!

Lemonades!

So with that we had a quick group pic and some goodbyes and then we headed back into the night. We naturally split into a fast and faster group and headed back home for a good stretch and then a few lemonades at the pub. Smashing night – thanks all.

Thank you as always for coming along, sign up for next week's run here.

PB out.

22 GoodGymers ran between 4-7km, gardened for Sheltered Housing, worked the Skip Garden compost machine and litter picked!

Triple tasking, love it! Welcome to newcomer Caroline, it's great to have you along and awesome to meet you!

In the news this week:

• We said farewell to Lucia Gobbi, Coach Runner Rep and awesome GGer, who is off to Italy to learn how to be a Roman for 4 months. See you soon LG!
• Tonight is GG Monthly Drinks down in Brixton, there'll be International Pun of the Month, Heroes and Pritesh standing on a chair! Sign up here and see you there!

Right triple tasking means triple reporting, first up Litter Picking by PB:

After an active warm up with the entire group we split in three directions to do good and get fit in the wonderful Camden. Litter picking, as ever is important and helps keep our local parks and community areas cleaner and more welcoming. Seven of us headed over to the local Somers Town Park to do just that, getting into pairs we spread across the park and picked all the rubbish.

Beer bottles!

After 15 minutes of picking up bottles, cigarettes, cans, wrappers and more. With a surprise final weigh in Liv and Arnulfo were the winners. We then ran over to Skip Garden to meet the other group.

Skip Garden Run Report by Lucia Gobbi

Seven of us were greeted at the skip garden by the lovely Paul and given three jobs to do. One group quickly got to raking the gravel as gaps had started to appear and it needed some 'tlc'. The rest of us worked our arms at the compost machine. We turned and also sieved the compost coming out, it was warm and VERY fragrant! Mmmmmm....

Did it smell LG?

With the two task groups combined we headed to Granary Square to do a fitness session. It went something like this:

1. Socket to Pocket Technique session
2. Progression Running around the square
3. Drill & tag game - mountain climbers, squats and an amazing looking at the moon pose!
4. Monthly Time Trial!

Time Trial results:

3.14 - Sarah H 3.16 - Anthony 3.18 - Lucia 3.22 - Arnulfo 3.31 - Laura 3.39 - Damaris 3.53 - Becky 3.56 - Caroline 3.58 - Freya 4.10 - Sarah R

Sheltered Housing Run Report by Pritesh:

Eight of us headed up to Kentish Town, it really wasn't a night for running with it being very humid and hot. We had a two mile journey and were ably led by Chris. We arrived at Ashdown Crescent Sheltered Housing and there met Cathi, the Sheltered Housing Manager. She outlined the task, we had some leaf collecting, digging and pruning to do! We all split in to our groups and worked solidly for 30 minutes! The garden looked great and it was a really nice task. Before we left we were treated to some refreshments (shock horror - biscuits in C and learned all about the Sheltered Housing scheme which helps adults 65 and over who need some assistance but can still live on their own. It was really good to learn about who we were helping and we hope to come back and help out more! With that we headed back to base for a good stretch down!

Sign up for next week here.

PB out.

As the summer evenings draw to a close, 12 runners got their sprint on, ran 4km, did some gardening and ate a BBQ!

It's always fun when you manage to fit a lot into an evening. But we got a lot a lot into this GoodGym.

We welcomed Anna who will be leading the Hammersmith & Fulham GoodGym starting next week. She took us through a warm up on the run making sure we skipped as high as possible, stretched out those calves and made sure our glutes were engaged!

Soon everyone was ready for a time trial around Peckham Rye: a timed 720m sprint set against yourself. A mega effort from all especially the first timers who had never witnessed anything GoodGym and got so involved.

Next up, time to deal with the never ending hill.

The lovely lot at Grove Park Allotments were hosting us this eve with a lot of watering, pruning, potato digging and weeding to get through. We were, however, to be spoilt and fuelled by a brill BBQ (home made tomato chutney was a particular highlight) that Lizzie at the allotment had put on as a thank you to us.

Knowing there was food to be had, we got through all the jobs with much speed.

Outnumbered by veggies

We got to work with our penultimate task of eating. Which meant a brief silence enjoying the peaceful setting of a London garden.

Obviously, there was a run home to be done despite the eating. So, once rubbish had been collected, some home brewed quince & pear vodka sampled, we were off on a slow jog home.

A minimum of two stitches and we made it back. Full and a full evening, we stretched off and said our goodbyes. Good eating and good goodgymming.