Lights! Camera! Action!

Last night in Hounslow we were the (slightly sweaty) stars of the silver screen as the council had come along to make a little film about being active in the borough.

But before we could learn our lines and hit make up, we had our usual hellos and well dones. Hat tip to all that did park runs this week - way to go Matthew and David - and to Andy who is topping both the distance and good deed leagues. Have a look at the heroes boards to see where you are. But now Natasha has stopped her Strava flat lining who knows what will happen in the rankings!

After a quick warm up and some Chariots of Fire style shots of the group running, wind in our hair, past our starting point at the Town Hall, we set off on the 1.5 mile run to Waterman's Arts Centre. Dave took us on a lovely route under Kew Bridge and along the tow path. We must have looked quite the team with every single one of us in our red GG tshirts. Lovely stuff! Before long we made it to the centre - Waterman's is an amazing independent charity where all the money made is ploughed back into the organisation to allow the whole community access to arts, bringing them together through cultural participation.

We cracked straight on with our task, which was to weed the outside pathways which had become overgrown. We were given gloves and a range of tools including one which we could not work out - please see picture and if anybody can shed any light on it then let us know! There were also snails, lots of snails, which Remy and Natasha rescued.

Within half an hour the pathway was looking lovely and clear of weeds, so we set off back to the park to do a quick round of upper body, legs and core workouts. It was a speedy run back - well done team. We started with the arms - three rounds of tricep dips, wide arm press ups, and diamond press ups before moving on to legs, which involved doing lunges, mountain climbers (argh) and then a squat hold. We had a little break as a lovely person came over and asked what we were doing - we must have been a great advert for GoodGym! Then we finished off with a third round of core exercises featuring, of course, planks.

Next week we are off to help out Roger and the homeless shelter he runs at Ealing Road Baptist Church, which you can sign up to here which is going to be followed by a super special first ever Hounslow GG SOCIAL! I know. There are more details on the Hounslow GG facebook page or email me. Can't wait to see you there!

16 GoodGymers ran 2.5km and composted, sieved and spread mulch for Skip Garden

Thank you very much for coming to the first GoodGym Camden Starter Session of the year, it was lovely to meet all the first timers - Teb, Lina, Mafalda, Amy, Matt, Haoming, Sophie and Natasha! Brilliant stuff!

In the news this week:

1. GG Camden is moving its start location from next week, 100 metres down the road. We'll be meeting at the following address: The St Pancras and Somers Town Living Centre, 2 Ossulston Street, London, NW1 1DF. We'll still be meeting at 6.45pm and finishing at 8.30pm as normal.
2. GoodGym is holding its first time trial of the year at Regents Park on Sunday 29th January if you want to take place, more information here.
3. There are lots of races and events that GoodGym'ers are attending. Fancy joining them? Look under the 'Events' section on website or the GoodGym Race Team page. It's always great to have an aim whatever the distance :)

Right onto the evenings activities; after introducing ourselves and using Beth Hoskins for lots of good deed examples we checked out the new start location so we know where to go from next week. We then had an active warm up with dynamic stretches, high knees and more.

With myself leading and Polly back-marking we ran the 1km to Skip Garden, up the hill to Granary Square, passed the Dishoom queues and along the path to the wonderful hidden garden.

Upon our arrival the wonderful Gwen, who works at Skip Garden, gave us a wonderful tour and introduction, here are some key highlights:

1. Skip Garden is run by Global Generation.
2. They grow their own produce and have a cafe.
3. Importantly they do lots of educational work with young people and workplaces in the area.
4. The idea of Skip Garden is that it's moveable anywhere in the Kings Cross area, this is their 4th site.

For the task we split into two groups - the workout team and the task team - we swapped around after 10 minutes so everyone had a chance to do both! The wonderful Polly led on the task and described it as such:

We took it in turns to operate the Ridan (manual composting machine). Meanwhile the rest of the group sieved the compost that came out of it's BOTTOM. The lumps left in the sieve got put back in the Ridan and the now fine soil got spread amongst the flower beds outside the Skip Garden!

Smelly stuff!

On team workout we focused on some conditioning with some bench steps, tricep dips, squats, star jumps and press jumps. This was all mixed in with 'out fast & steady back' running. When switching teams we were stopped by Kings Cross Security wondering "asking what we were doing!" With which Beth replied "I'm doing GOOD!" (well something like that). Pretty amusing stuff ha

Security STOP!

Once we were all collected together and lots of sieved compost had been spread we headed back to Granary Square for some glute-balancing exercises and a running game before returning home.

It was a wonderful evening topped off by Bob welcoming us back with hot chocolate and biscuits.

Thank you for coming and I hope to see you next week, we are going to Cecil Sharp House to do some gardening. Sign up here.

PB out.