18 runners ran 3.5km to dig holes at Lettsom Gardens

News

• The next GoodGym Social will not be happening in Brent (my bad!) but somewhere TBC in Central London. It's happening next week on Thursday April 5th. There will be International Pun of The Month and much merry making. It's always a blast! Sign up here.

• Last night the unstoppable Helena ran her ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH good deed. Give her a big old cheer for that!

• SAVE THE DATE for GoodGym Olympics. It's happening on 30th June at Parliament Hill Athletics track. We have an egg and spoon race title to defend. We'll be having a flag party well in advance so get your thinking hats on. It's a wonderful day - there will be silly races and not so silly races and guaranteed hilarity. Sign up here.

• A big hello and welcome to Celia and Tom who joined us for the first time tonight!

And onto the good stuff... Last night 18 runners gathered whilst it was still light (thanks Deepak for the precision timing input) to run to Grove Park Allotments and Lettsom Gardens for a two-pronged task. We set off on the more scenic route and arrived 2km later happy as Larry.

Half of the group stayed at Grove Park Allotments and got busy weeding plots and scraping moss from the walkways whilst the other half went round the corner to Lettsom Gardens to start digging 70cmx70cm holes for sapplings that will be planted next week. Digging holes is no mean feat! Two groups worked on their holes with ground-looseners working up the turf and diggers making headway on the holes themselves. Those at Grove Park also had the chance to admire the new Bee Area that the group worked so hard at clearing. It's unrecognisable! Great work team!

After fifteen minutes the groups swapped around and after 35 minutes time was called and Liz came round to inspect the quality of our hole digging.

Holy Moly! 3 beautiful holes in 35 minutes!

A sterling effort made by everyone. Liz was delighted. She's very excited to have us back next week for a big task moving manure orders onto plots. It really will be a military precision exercise and we need as many hands on deck as possible. Sign up here.

We bid Liz farewell and headed back to base. Excellent work team and a great last task for Hanna who's come full circle - Grove Park was her first ever task!

See you next week! Lucy

It was a blustery evening in Chiswick last night, but that didn't stop the 13 runners who knocked out a speedy 6.4k to help out a local charity that supports those with longterm mental health issues.

But first of all we welcomed three whole new lovely members to the group, let's hear it for Ieva, Aysha and https://www.goodgym.org/runners/emmanuel-oyelowo. Give them a cheer!

We also had a another special reason to celebrate last night as it was Will's 50th ever good deed! What a superstar. That's a lot of running, and a whole load of doing good. Well done, Will.

After all that cheering we headed outside to warm up with some dynamic exercises, during which we found out which animal we would all be. There were a couple of cats, a squirrel, a grasshopper, a bird of prey, a rat and a, erm, dragon.

For the first leg of the run we set off at a good pace, stopping only for a few jumping jacks and squats to keep the group together. With an 8 minute mile, we were doing well, so pushed it even faster in the second and got to the Friends of Cathja shop in record time. Waiting for us there was terrifying Bruce the Dog, complete with natty red kerchief, and Karl and Rin who run the shop, which raises money to be able to support local people with mental health illnesses that rely on their help.

Our job tonight was to shift a load of mattresses and furniture from the front of the warehouse to the yard outside, and we got straight to it. Ieva and Emmanuel moved furniture and swept, Matthew, Adam and Andy got those mattresses moving, and Ross could be found teetering on top of a pile of boxes and tables sorting out all the stuff the shop could sell. Meanwhile the rest of the team was efficiently shifting and carrying things to the yard and bin area. 20 minutes later, we were done.

Apart from the grueling HIT session ahead of us, that is. We waved goodbye to Bruce and the shop, and ran the short distance to Waterman's Park where we found a nice spot to work hard. Five hard exercises each for 20 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of high knees, a short rest, then starting again. It was tough going, but the idea is that short, high intensity, high effort bursts of exercise are fantastic for burning fat, increasing cardio capacity and endurance. While that was enough for most of the group, Andy, Adam and Will stayed behind to complete Will's 50th challenge, which involved three sprints, 25 push ups and 25 press ups, before running to catch us up on the way back.

It was getting windier, which as Michelle pointed out was just good resistance training, and after a good steady run back to Chiswick Town Hall, we stretched out what was a fantastic but tough session. Then, because we had truly earned it, and it was a celebratory night after all, pub. Well done everybody, and welcome to the group for those whose first run it was. Hope to see you all next week for some more doing good, a shorter run, and of course a whole load of squats.

Ooh i do love a good 'GG on Tour' night and this month we were hosted by the delightful GoodGym-ers from Southwark.

I've been failing a bit miserably with drinks reports of late so welcome to the new slimmed down version of the report - it's a lot more do it yourself - and hopefully i will get these reports out regularly now!

So here's what you missed, didn't hear or just want to recap on:

Heroes:

• Top marks to Beth Hoskins for 21 good deeds in June!

You can access all the info here until 31st July and here's the info from Southwark too

• Congratulations to GG Hackney who had the most new runners last month with 21!

• NEW FEATURE Congratulations to GG Wandsworth who had the most total attendances last month with 178!

• Finally there were 16 new black tshirt wearers (50 good deeds) and Issy Sloman and Tom Hunter earnt their wings (100 good deeds) - well done all of you!

News

• We had our biggest ever event with 176 runners to launch Volunteer's Week 2017 - read the report here

• We had the incredible GoodGym Olympics (thanks Tom Benson) - 21 areas involved, 18 events, two flag parades, a bake-off... and SO much more! Congratulations to GG Camden the overall winners and to GG Lewisham the flag parade winners!

• GoodGym Norwich and Brighton have launched and Barnsley is coming in August - do let friends, family...anyone you know!

Boring Bit

• Hit up the missions please - we have loads, it's a great way to meet other runners, you don't have to run there and it can be a nice stepping stone to coach running too! Check out the new missions selector here.

• TaskForce - I keep going on about it but this is your chance to have your say in the way GG is run and to be a real influence in your own areas. Ask me or your trainer about joining or setting up a TaskForce in your area!

and last but not least...the International Pun of the Month:

"Cutting Hedge Technology" from a mission in Southwark!

So thank you to GG Southwark , thank you to all that came - it was a wonderful night where we learnt that I'm pretty handy in a wheelchair (Massive shouts to Chris (and Hanna who brought him) for getting to drinks despite recently breaking his leg!), Southwark re-invented the guest speech and that a cocktail happy hour will wreak havoc on 'the' speech!

Next month will be in Central London - please hold the 3rd and 10th of August - and the details will be up as soon as I have details confirmed!

That's all from me but get in touch with questions, suggestions and anything else! (pritesh@goodgym.org/07887802793/@pritski)

p.s. Please do follow me on twitter if you can for many many GG related updates and also join the 'Unofficial' Facebook Group here (remember to state your area) for more info on races, training runs, socials and other news from the GG community.

A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!

GoodGym Greenwich smashed all previous records AGAIN last night with a whopping 33 of you running 8km to help the Scouts!

Last night was AAAAAAMAZING. The weather was slightly nicer than the complete washout we had last week, plus we had our biggest turnout EVER in Greenwich. It doesn't seem long ago that I had Taylor Swift in my head after 22 of you came... never did I think it would continue to grow this much... you guys are AWESOME!!!

We welcomed quite a few new faces to the group last night which is GREAT! Big thanks to recruiters Helen and Mridula for bringing their colleagues Maria & Irina. We were joined by two lovely gents Pulin & Nick. We also welcomed back Amy G after a little break and the wonderful Jack from Wandsworth who travelled quite a distance to get to Greenwich, but we're worth it aren't we Jack :) GIVE THEM ALL A CHEER!

HOLIYAY

The headcount used to take about 4 seconds, now it has become part of the ritual and takes a good 5 minutes to go around everyone! Favourite thing pivoted slightly last night to next holiday destination (inspired by the sunshine obviously) and it was great to hear where you're all off to. There were some pretty exotic ones, Swindon in particular, Alex and Steve please could you take me in your suitcase????

We dropped off our stuff, did a quick little warm up and split into 2 groups. Ben with the hat and Ben with the hat led a fast group who we lost sight of in about 40 seconds. The rest of us went at a slightly more leisurely pace :) We went through the park, everyone smashed it up the hill, had a 60 second breather and then pushed on!

20 minutes later we arrived at the scouts. Group 1 had already got themselves stuck in which was great to see! Scout Leader Alan explained the tasks that needed to be done. Arguably the most exciting of which was putting up the flagpole! This is something that has been on our list of things to do the last couple of times we've been here but we've never actually got round to doing it. But last night it was ON! George got started and he dug deep... literally.

"Tonight Matthew, I'm gonna be..."

With a little help from Christian, Elliot & Steve the cement was ready to go in, which created a lovely Stars In Their Eyes puff of smoke. Steve filled a bucket with "water" and chucked it down the hole and 5 minutes later it had set... JOB DONE.

In the meantime, other people were painting shutters, weeding in the jungle, filling fox holes (don't worry Nina there were no baby foxes in there), axing trees... literally everything was going down. 8pm approached and it was time to get going. We had a group photo by the wonderful flagpole which kind of looked a bit naked without a flag on it, just a white stick in the ground basically.... but it had to be done. We headed back the way we came, by this point the sun was a little less fierce which made for a lovely chilled run back. Since we were a bit later than planned and everyone had already run 8km, we skipped the fitness session and went straight into some nice stretching... you're welcome :) Trying to up my game after hearing other GG groups do yoga in their sessions haha!

Brownie points!

We went to stuff our faces with some amazing brownies baked by the equally amazing Mridula! Then we parted ways.... until next time gang!!!

For those of you who are new, here is the link to our ever growing Facebook group where people post about races and missions and well, anything really! Please join :)

Amazing job last night everyone! Thanks for getting stuck in as always, that would have taken Alan a whole day (if not more) to get everything done that you did in half an hour so really well done!!! And congratulations on, once again, being a part of our biggest ever run! YOU GUYS ROCK!! XXX

Hey, spring! Where did you go? It's very rude to lure us in with your pretty sun and warm weather, only to whip it away again so we have to start our runs in the cold and damp. Still, it didn't put off five runners ready to get fit and do good in Hounslow, for we are GoodGym.

We had a lovely new runner, Barry join us for the first time last night. Barry, like a total legend, has recently given up smoking, so he deserves a double cheer. Go on, GoodGym, do the double click! We also said a big well done to Andy, Toni and Dave who are all topping the Hounslow leader boards. Great work.

After a chat about the upcoming missions this weekend ( if you fancy it you can sign up here)we did a few quick stretches, and found out where everybody's favourite place in the world is - answers ranged from Spain, Tenerife, and Rome to anywhere by the sea. Lovely stuff!

It was a good two mile run to the task this week, so we set off on a nice route that meandered by the river. After no time at all we arrived at the Friends of Cathja shop in Brentford, an amazing charity that supports local people with enduring health problems. The warehouse is full to the brim with every kind of donation you could imagine, but our job this week was to sort out a towering pile of books into manageable boxes. While testing our spatial awareness we had great fun flinging bags of things over the donation mountain. We came across every book, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar (remember that?) to The Bible in Spanish, and before long we had amassed a huge pile of boxes full of books ready to sell.

We all (sort of) agreed the run back felt much shorter, maybe because we were discussing what was for dinner. While Alannah and Barry debated the merits (or not) of KFC, Andy made us feel tired as he did a couple of tough loops of hard running, and we even managed to find out a bit about the amazing history of this corner of Hounslow. A jam packed run back! After a few stretches, our Wednesday run drew to a close. But it was not without making a difference to our local community, plus getting a good long run in. Well done team! Next week we're off to help the homeless at Ealing Baptist Church, you can sign up here (and I hope you do!):

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/a-helping-hand-for-the-homeless

9 Goodgymers ran 2.5k and returned to a task at the Marcus Garvey Library

unbeweavable

On our way to the task we paired up and did some laps around Clyde Circus before setting off for the rest of the run toward The Friends of Tottenham Green site.

Laura was just about ready for us as we arrived so we headed over to the library to continue with the task we started last week. Lots more of the over grown area was cleared along with a pile of rubble and more of the dark organic matter that had fallen on the white pebble dash that weaves alongside the pathway into the green space. Speaking of weaving we uncovered a cool wicker woven mini tipi in the undergrowth. It was pretty unbeweavable.

A fitness session with partner exercises and a warm down ensued.

Sign Up For Future Sessions Below!

Sign up for our next Wednesday night group run & task Here, followed by our monthly social! So head on over for a eggselent feast.

We also have a weekend missions coming.. check it out Here. Get involved.

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Until next time folks - do good, stay fit & look out for the light