I had a great morning at the food bank. Luca, Leon and the team made me very welcome and soon put me to work, after appropriate temperature checks and hand gel of course. First job was filling food parcels for families of various sizes from their handy pre prepared “shopping lists”. After that it was time to sort food into boxes according to their use by date to avoid food being wasted by passing its expiry date. I was asked to sort biscuits and I have never seen so many packets of yummy digestives, custard creams and my personal favourite, fig rolls! Time for some more sorting and labelling food to ensure all the stock is organised and rotated, it really is like a well oiled machine. Finally I was extremely pleased to pass on the dozens and dozens of carrier bags which I have accumulated over the last few months as our online supermarket no longer takes them back for recycling. Luckily they came in useful at the food bank for packing donations into and I finally get my garage space back! All in all a very productive morning - and another mission “in the bag”!

Our first week of isolation runs dates back further than a week, as we began sharing our run pictures at the excellent request of Annie, when we got the news that all GoodGym activity was being paused.

I’m sure we all take in lots of views as we rack up miles...

This also came on the week of the first anniversary of our friends at GoodGym Solihull. The suggestion was met with an instantly positive response to the disappointment of not being able to mark this anniversary or get together as a group. As you will be able to see from the photos shared, we have taken in a lot of good views as we have kept fit during isolation and social distancing. There were also plenty of tantalising hints of our group run venues, with our city centre dwellers finding our meeting point of 1000 Trades, as well as the spots where we do hill reps and time trials.

The first set of photos are really touching to look back on, especially as they tended to be shared with a ‘here you go, Annie’ comment. Through this we’ve also learned what a streak is, how good some photography skills are in the group and as time went on the photos became a ‘where am I’ quiz. They have already had a life beyond the group as Morwenna has done a great job of sharing them on the GG Birmingham Twitter page. At this point it was clear that the first photo of the day inspired others to get out and we were really appreciating the nature around us as we ran to stay fit.

Not all heroes wear (Lands)capes

We’ve seen how we have been able to keep each other motivated and encouraged during the hugely changeable early days of this crisis. The photos really do paint a picture of the changing landscape around us as we learn to keep healthy and safe for everyone.

It’s clear we will continue to be there for each other, through more of these sessions (hopefully not for too long) and through our support in the WhatsApp group. If you’re not in the group and want to be added, get in touch with me at johnhayes@goodgym.org and you will find a lot to keep you going.

I began the day checking to see whether a cancellation notice had come through, as Perry Hall parkrun was off the previous week due to Storm Dennis, and the River Tame had burst to flood the park for most of the week.

Thankfully it was quite pleasant as I set up the course with Mark, a regular parkrunner at Perry Hall. It was a bit windy, which is situation normal in this exposed park, so we had to put out the minimum of cones to reduce the chances of everything getting blown away.

But as we were finishing, it really turned, as we turned into a massive headwind, pushing us back and rearranging our hair as the rain began to join in. We started to rue our confidence in the good running weather we had talked about as we got back to the start line and everyone was saying “I’m here now even though I’m tempted to go straight home”.

As we got there, Elizabeth was ending her First Timers briefing. She had a good crowd, some doing parkrun for the first time and many at Perry Hall for the first time as their local had been cancelled.

As the parkrun began, Elizabeth took part as I got serious run envy as I headed home to take my kids out to a party.

Tonight we welcomed 3 new runners, go and give Sarah, Kate and Arabella a big cheer for coming along to their first ever GoodGym session! They weren't completely on their own in getting used to the Foodbank mission, as Elizabeth was doing her first here and one of the Church volunteers came along for his first shift as well (he also won the competition for the oldest out of date with a 2015 can of soup).

I joined Rauul in surprising task owner Luca with the amount we know about the task, since I joined him with Liam for the first time in December of last year. Adding to the experience, Tousif arrived after getting in a few running miles before the task.

In the meantime, we weighed in a few boxes of Tesco donations and began to sort them out. Then we began to roll out the big task of the evening, which we knew was coming as we had to leave absolute Towers of donations last week - all weighed in but in need of sorting. So, although the trolley is empty in the photo, it was doing return journeys for the best part of an hour until the walls of food in one room rapidly got distributed into the other. At one point we had so many hands on deck, that as soon as I picked a handful of items from a full crate to put into their groups, I looked back and the same crate was empty.

After what felt like both forever and no time at all, we were onto dating the foods to make it easy for the day shift volunteers to give out food in date. Possibly due to the music playing, we made quick work of it and by the time 8.30 drew near, we had prepared nearly everything for the shelves. What an epic display! Then we had our reward as Luca had left out crisps and doughnuts which were very happily received after all that hard work.

We'll be back at the Foodbank next week to do more of the same, hopefully without the walls of work to contend with. Again it is full already, but look ahead as I'll be listing it every week. Rauul will be leading next week, thank you for stepping up in my absence.