The easing of the lockdown restrictions meant the arrival of our first mid-week task of the year!! Whooo hooo!!!!

7 GoodGym runners split into two teams to help the City of Chelmsford Mencap prepare for their renovations before their grand reopening at the end of April. They had a lot of big heavy furniture that needed to be put into storage so they didn’t get in the way of the new flooring being installed. Myself, Catherine, Russell D and Fay met up at the Mencap centre on Mildmay Road where we met Karen to load the items onto the removal van. Rich, Jenny and James met up at the Big Yellow Storage to unload the van and put the items safely into their new home for the next few weeks. For the ‘Mencap’ group this meant being mainly indoors. Unfortunately for the ‘Big Yellow’ group, it meant they were waiting outside on a sunny and beautiful but rather chilly April evening. Luckily James and Rich bought their winter coats!

The task didn’t take quite as long as had been potentially anticipated though and within 30 minutes we had loaded up the tables and storage units on to the van and just had a few other things to move around such as the piano that had a mind of it's own into the lobby and a few smaller tables out of the way. Unless I hear otherwise I can only assume everything went swimmingly at the Big Yellow end.

It was great to be back at the Mencap centre after such a long hiatus. Hopefully we will be back again shortly after the renovations are completed to move things back from the Big Yellow Storage and maybe to even to do some painting, which we were originally meant to have done in November but that second lockdown thingy got in the way a bit.

Well done everyone, see you all again soon!!

This, like most 2020 Social Distancing events, our Chelmsford GoodGym Christmas party went online this year. Thanks to the magic of Zoom Conferencing there was no need for a Face Mask, I’m sure Matt Hancock would approve. Whilst we waited for everyone to join, David had been Stock Piling some charades which we played!! I had clearly forgotten you shouldn’t talk when whilst playing. Thankfully Fay was like a seasoned pro, saving peoples blushes and making outstanding guesses from some rather dodgy mimes.

Once everyone had joined the call, David's excellent quiz began (and I mean excellent, pub landlords everywhere would have been proud!!). The first round was a very tough ‘General Knowledge’ round. Jenny stormed into an early lead thanks to her encyclopaedic knowledge of Christmas films getting 9/10 in the second round; ‘Where is Santa From?’ Only let down by having not watched classic Christmas horror ‘Silent Night’.

Most of us struggled on the ‘Whose Xmas Tree is This?’ round; picking which celebrity each Christmas tree belonged to, even with it being multiple choice it was a struggle, who would have guessed Britney Spears home would look like that! Andy had to depart for another pressing engagement half way through but luckily Rich joined in to say hi and conveniently took his place, well timed Rich.

The fourth round was ‘2020’ consisting of anagrams of various things that were popular in 2020 and remembering some famous faces who have unfortunately, and some rather untimely, left us this year; Chadwick Boseman, Maradona, Kirk Douglas, Sean Connary and Kobe Bryant. The last round was my favourite; ‘Real or False’, guessing which of the presents David had received for Christmases gone by. The highlights for me included the drainpipe(?!) and Only Fools and Horses dressing gown. Lovely Jubbly!!

The scores were totted up whilst we played more charades, it was a two horse race with only half a point in it… Had Jenny kept up her early quiz pace……

The short answer is no. Laurie had managed to claw her way back was declared the winner! Well done Laurie!!!!

Thanks for a wonderful quiz David, it really was outstanding! Everyone should definitely go and give you lot of Christmas Cheers!!!!

EDIT - I can't let it go without saying - a big and well deserved 'well done' to our amazing area activator Russell! Took on the reigns in a trying time and is smashing it so far. A unanimous and worthy winner who gets his name on the coveted 'Goodgymer of the year' trophy!

And lastly I hope you all have a wonderful a Christmas as you can have during what has been a strange and difficult year. See you all in the New Year! Roll on 2021!!!!

Seven running enthusiasts ran just over 5k to pick litter

On what has to be one the hottest and most humid days in GoodGym Chelmsford history, 7 brave runners picked up litter around the Melbourne area.

We met up at the university to collect our litter pickers and bags where we also bumped into Katie who came to meet us for a short hello on her way home. Litter pickers in hand we headed to Melbourne, walking most of the way to avoid getting sweat patches. Whilst picking up a lot of beer bottles we learned that David and Laurie are going to be appearing in the background of a TV show in the near future, that Jenny has a Tortoise which will probably outlive her and received a picture of a tortoise for her recent birthday (happy birthday!!!!) and hopefully James will have a good day tomorrow with it being A-Level results day (good luck). We also played a game of snog, marry, avoid, the results of which do not need to be repeated.

Once we had rid the streets of Melbourne of all the rubbish we could, find yours truly managed to spill the entire contents of a bag full, right next to a bin rather than in it…. Oops, and it was all going so well.

Once my mess had been put in the bin we made our way back to university to drop off the litter pickers and actually managed to run most of the way as it had cooled down significantly.

Well done everyone, and thanks for saving my blushes. See you all again shortly on the next mission.

It is good to see 9 (and 2 bonus runners showing off their hounds) of us again!

We met at the usual place and Fay and Leanne came to show-off their dogs! Absolute beauties, both Paisley and Astra. As all Goodgymers are beautiful, they'd fit in nicely.

We decided we were going to pick some litter up towards Melbourne. With it being bin day tomorrow, there was a lot of excess litter so we soon got to work. Joel aimed to get lucky on some scratch cards, Russell aimed to get lucky by not pouring suspicious yellow liquid on himself. Fun times.

We ran down and through the park, we were BLESSED to see an old friend. Emphasis on the 'old', isn't that right Gerry. We then headed back to base for the main event, the reason we all came, Rich's 100th GOOD DEED CELEBRATION. As we showered him in party poppers, he basked in his glory. What a treat. Collecting every scrap of litter up we bid our farewells for another fortnight.

Happy running and good luck to anyone who might have anything important coming up this week, say on Tuesday.

A taste of normality arrived with our first sort-of GoodGym run since March!

The evening started off muggy as we met at our usual place - on a Tuesday this time to ensure Jenny could make it. Only fair after she helped us escape the Witch's Tower last week.

It was lovely to see a small, socially distanced group of us. We have missed our GoodGym runs and we'd spied some litter that had our name on it down by the Bunny Walks!

On the way there we bumped into Rich, who came along for a pick. We got the pickers and some bags, wiping them down before jogging on down. We filled up four bags of rubbish, while learning a lot about Russell's strange seduction technique, dropped the pickers back off and ran a loop on back.

Oh, and we also saw a lovely cat!

All told, the run was about 6km at a leisurely pace. It was just lovely to see some of the GoodGymers again! Staying socially distanced and not having a group hug was tough but we just about managed it. We will try and do something similar on 15th July - dependent on Government advice.

Stay safe and happy running!

Fifteen runners attended tonights group run and we were still in the dark and drizzly rain!

We can't wait for the light evenings which seem a very, very distant memory!

Our usual warm up along the pedestrian area through the university in the drizzle to get the muscles warmed up. We headed out led by Joel and the tail was Rachel, a big mac(keown) sandwich! We took a different route to Moulsham Mill via the river and the Riverside Sports Centre.

Tonights task was to visit our friends at Interact and dig over the Vegetable beds getting them ready for planting. Breaking out the tools and wheelbarrows, two groups set about turning over the soil and pulling up weeds. After all the rain the soil looked in a fairly good condition and was easy to get into. Julie was working the soil with a hoe extremely expertly and it looked a work of art when she had finished.

Looks like we did a good job so hopefully the beds can now be planted up with a new season of vegetable. It was time to pack up and head back to the Uni. We took a longer way back via Victoria road and a photo call at "And So To Bed", the most inviting bed shop in Chelmsford, then onto Bunny Walk and an opportunity to do some lamp post sprints back to base.

Good luck to Isabelle for the Half Marathon in Victoria Park, London at the weekend.

It's celebration time at parkrun this week with "International Womens Day" being celebrated, a further bonus as it is "Chase the Pacer day" at Chelmsford parkrun, make sure you get there!

Happy running.