200 flyers, 7 keeno runners, 6k and a whole load of guilty pleasures made up another cracking night in Hounslow!

We kicked off the evening with a few bits of news, including plans for our long run on the 3rd December and cheering Remy to half marathon glory on the 2nd December. Not forgetting of course that next week is our very FIRST birthday and we shall be celebrating with a great task (putting up flatpack furniture), a birthday-themed fitness game, and a pub quiz that we are going to smash. There will almost certainly be cake.

We then took ourselves outside for a warm up and to find out everybody's guilty pleasures. Although we should never feel guilty about pleasure, of course. TV shows (trashy and decidedly not trashy) featured quite highly in between high knees and heel kicks, including Outlander, Gilmore Girls, Made in Chelsea and Love Island. To which the latter particularly Ella had showed an impressive commitment. Sunflower seeds and bad action films we agreed were more noble pursuits.

We had a speedy run down to Waterman's Art Centre - a great independent charity that aims to inspire people of all backgrounds through creativity and provide art for all. Almost 2.5 k later and we arrived at the reception desk to find a pile of 200 flyers for an upcoming Digital Weekender waiting for us to distribute. This event in a couple of weeks is crammed full of fun and fascinating free sessions, so do check it out.

Now, we had done this before for Waterman's with mixed success, but this time we were going to do it better. We had already mapped out an area that we were going to hit up, so quickly made our way there. Splitting up into two groups to cover both sides of the street, we got ourselves into formation to put a flyer through every letterbox. Soon we were operating like (a bit rusty) clockwork. We covered about 2k in this way, encountering some menacing barking and some beautiful houses, and soon found ourselves empty handed and back at Turnham Green for our fitness session.

This week were CODE CRACKING. Yes, it was complicated, and no, it probably wasn't explained very well. The idea was that two teams had to each crack a 6 number code. Each number related to a certain exercise and could appear more than once. Each team had to guess the correct sequence but to find out whether they had, they had to do each exercise. A square bracket meant it was the right number in the right position. Phew. I said it was complicated. Still, it was no match for Ella, Andreea and Natasha, who just in the nick of time managed to crack that code and were declared the winners. I mean, there wasn't an actual prize. But they won an overall sense of satisfaction, and that is priceless.

After a few stretches and a cool down we revelled in our post-run, post-goodness endorphin high and called it a night. Great work team. Bring on next week!

Last night eight runners braved the rain to help out at a local foodbank, got completely soaked, and still ended the night with a smile on their faces. What a team.

It started at the Town Hall with a little light drizzle and a lot of good news. Well done to Dave and Andy who both did great times at the Gunnersbury parkrun this weekend, to Remy, who gritted her teeth and beat the grueling Winshester half marathon, to Natasha who smashed a 5k race, and to Will, who joined us after an intense 10k the night before. What a week of running.

With a short warm up and a quick discussion about our favourite chocolate bars - which ranged from healthy dark chocolate and lime to good old Lion bars - we set off on the 3k run to Ealing Road Baptist Church. Shout out to Jennifer who had a great run down there, and to Michelle for battling jetlag womanfully! We also saw some excellent fartlek from Andy, Will and Remy.

Roger, the Pastor, was waiting for us with water and jobs as we soggily trooped into the building. A quick shake off and we were ready to get stuck in. It started with stacking books and chairs, which we completed in no time at all, before we moved onto the foodbank which Roger runs for local communities in need. With Will and Adam skillfully dismantling a stack of shelves the rest of us formed a (somewhat chaotic at points) human chain to empty and pack up the food. It turned out to be a lot of fun as well as a good upper body work out. Even if we did have to have several attempts at taking the video. " You actually have to move" said Natasha.

By the time the jobs were done the rain was coming even more steadily, which gave us a nice opportunity to 'cool down'. We're fighting a embittered battle to 'Beat the Streets' in Hounslow at the moment, and each have a card which we tap against a whole load of stations across the borough to record how far we've covered. So, despite the rain, off we went looking for meters, happily tapping and squatting our way round and noting all the good pubs that we weren't stopping at.

Before long we had made it back to our starting point, and with a few stretches we finished the night, already anticipating hot cups of Yorkshire tea, warm dressing gowns, even warmer showers and cold prosecco. Next week, it'll be warm and dry as we tackle the fly posters and graffiti under Turnham Bridge, so go on, sign up here.

Don't forget the social next Thursday at the fabulously named Blacksmith and Toffeemaker in Angel, where we will represent Hounslow at the monthly international pun of the month competition!

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.