Lovely to see blue skies, new faces, and some GoodGym tourism at our Monday group last night.

• Let's give a huge cheer to Zuhaib and Jess who both came along for their first GG session - welcome to the group!

We started off with lots of bits of news...

• If you're wondering about GoodGym and the Coronavirus, have a look a look at our advice to runners here

• A huge well done to all your mission runners this weekend, you are community heroes. If you're looking for something this weekend, then check out this great River Wandle clear up on Sunday.

  • Social time - the monthly GoodGym social is BACK! If you haven't been to one before then it's a great chance to meet other GGers from different groups, find out what's been going on, and generally have a good old knees up! All the details are here.

After all that, we were ready to hit the road, but not before a warm up outside, and a quick poll to find out where in the world would be our dream running location. The places we chose were seriously exotic - Paraguay, Peru, all the mountains, by the sea, California....basically anywhere with a bit of sun. Roll on summer!

We had a new task location last night at a local school, so after a couple of kms we arrived to find headteacher Jane waiting for us with our job for the evening. We were delighted to find that it was indoors!

The school is over 130 years old, and has more than 700 children, so Jane asked us to help with a good clean down of all the woodwork. They were super prepared for us, with loads of bowls or soapy water, and with several floors and many classrooms to tackle, we got straight on with it.

We oohed and aahed over the tiny furniture, little bowls of fruit and cute kids paintings as we worked, and Frances, who had come to drama classes at the school when she was a kid, even offered to reprise her award-winning role as tin man. It was just Oscar season after all!

After half an hour of elbow grease we had scrubbed, washed, wiped and disinfected, and we all regrouped in the staff room, which felt like we'd been a bit naughty, for a group photo.

A short jog to the common later, it was time for fitness and this week we took on a twist on tabata. Usually this is short bursts of different exercises with 10 second breaks designed to raise our heart rates and increase aerobic capacity. We decided to incorporate a speed session into this as well, so switched up 20 seconds of sprinting with short rests and did it eight times over. Everyone put in max effort, which was great to see. Nice work team.

All that was left was a lovely downhill run back to base and some stretching. Fancy some more next week? I hope so, because we have got a great task shifting bags of compost up to a rooftop garden. You can sign up for more Monday fun here, and until then, run happy GoodGym!

2 Storms in 2 weeks has made for some horrendous ruining conditions recently, but storm Dennis was definitely not enough to put off the team from GoodGym Wandsworth, especially with the prospect off some great company, putting in a tonne of hard work and helping a good cause!!

We had 6 new runners join us this evening and I’d like to offer a huge GoodGym Wandsworth welcome to Helena, Ece, David, Galabina, Rosie & Emily, go ahead and give them a cheer

NEWS

There’s lots coming up at GoodGym, here’s a recap of this week’s news,

The GoodGym Shindig

The shindig is a getaway where runners from all GoodGym areas come together for a weekend of running, socialising and chatting all things GoodGym. The shindig is being held from the 7th till the 9th of August. If you are interested in attending register here

The Big Half

The Big Half Marathon is taking place in London on the 1st March, with a number of GoodGym runners already signed up to take place. If you missed out on a chance to run, you can still get involved by signing up to volunteer

There is also a social after the event taking place in the London Bridge area

The 2020 Big Six races

The big 6 races for this year have been announced and the details are now up on the race team page. There are an array of distances and locations to choose from and you'll get to meet other GoodGym members from all over the country

Community mission

On the 29th February we have a community mission helping out around Fulham Palace Gardens. So, if you’d like a chance at a post ParkRun community mission, sign up here

DO GOOD, GET FIT

This week’s task was helping at a local church called St. Saviour's Battersea Fields, who support the community by organising and running several community group sessions which include free meditation, a choir and a community space

We started by warming up outside Battersea Arts Centre to get us ready for the first leg of our run. We then covered a steady paced first 1.5km and arrived at our destination wind swept but ready to get stuck in

All 37 of us were met by the church administrator who was slightly overwhelmed by our numbers. We quickly split into small groups and got stuck into a huge list of jobs, which included cleaning the kitchen, pantry, washing up, scrubbing the oven, painting the hall, pillars and corridors, moving furniture and toys, weeding, litter picking, clearing the guttering and emptying the window display

An hour later we’d completed our tasks, leaving the church in great condition, the church team happy and all of us with a great feeling of satisfaction

Our fitness session was sacrificed in order to get the most out of our time at the church. Which was compensated by taking a longer route back to base at a nice speedy pace. After a quick stretch we were all done for the night with our tasks complete and 4km in the bag, amazing work all round team Wandsworth!!

COMING UP

Next week Ana will be back and leading us for our task where we're going to be distributing flyers for an amazing youth event being put on by local charity Providence House, sign up here

I’d like to thank you for all for the awesome effort and hard work you all put in tonight

Have a great week and Happy Running!!

We started off our run last night with some stats from our month of doing good to kick off 2020. You did an incredible job in Wandsworth, racking up a brilliant 188 good deeds, and covering a huge 1821 kilometers. Seriously impressive. As a whole, the numbers are even more amazing - the GoodGym community managed 8646 good deeds, and ran 98521 in the process. What an incredible wave of good happening across the country!

• Welcome to GoodGym Christina, Emily and Karen. It's all about getting fit and adding purpose to your run, and we're really happy you've joined us!

• Well done to all of you who got out there at the weekend, including Caroline who ran her first parkrun, and to Kate and Diego all spotted covering the miles at parkruns across London!

The Venue is a community centre we visit fairly regularly to support - it is run by Hadas, who organises the Waste Not Want Not , the first project in Battersea which collects surplus food from nearby markets and distributes it through local community . The community centre is run by volunteers, so we were happy to run the 2km down there to lend a hand.

Before we set off we did our weekly warm up, and also discussed the objects in our life that bring us joy. Top of the list were bikes, food, our beds and of course, cheese. What more could we need?

After a quick stop to knock out a wall sit, we arrived at the Venue and split into groups to tackle the jobs. While one team set about giving the community kitchen a deep clean, ready for another week of cooking for local people, a human chain was quickly formed to transport crates of mushrooms and compost to the roof garden around the corner. Meanwhile, several GGers got to work emptying the storage room to be able to fit in some beds which will be going to a refugee family. There was also a spot of tidying up to do outside the centre, as well as window washing and hoovering. What a lot of elbow grease!

With all the jobs ticked off it was time for our abs blast, and we kicked off with a core triathlon, before moving on to various planks and other abs focused moves. Great for keeping our form in good shape when we run and preventing injury, it's good to make this sort of conditioning part of your weekly training. Hello abs of steel!

We finished off the session with a run back to base, a bit of a hill sprint, and some nice stretching. Great work everybody! It was off to the pub for the monthly social for some of us - watch out for March's post-run fun on March 2nd, and in the meantime why not sign yourself up for next Monday's run here. Hopefully see you then. Until then, run happy!

It was the last group run of January last night in Wandsworth - and what a month of doing good and getting fit it's been! It was great to see 37 runners meeting to help out at a community garden. We also welcomed Benjamin, Rachel and Grainne to the group - give them a cheer!

We started off the night with some news:

• Free this lunchtime and want to squeeze in a quick and very helpful mission? Then look no further than this one for Free2Be, a charity which supports LGBTQ+ young people in Wandsworth. They need a hand moving their office, and have GoodGym to help out at 12pm at their offices near Clapham Junction.

• It's the last week of the January challenge - just one final push to make the 8000 good deeds and 100 000 kms we've got as a target. Wandsworth is looking good with 179 good deeds and 1,636 - can we get any more in before January runs out?

• It's the monthly Wandsworth social next week - hope to see you after for the session for 2-4-1 burgers and post-run fun. Sign up for all the details

We headed outside to do our warm up and, as it was the last run of January, to discuss whether we had kept to any new year's resolutions we had made. Quite a few of us had avoided making one altogether, but there have been some excellent successes - eating fewer biscuits, doing something that challenges us (like Frances jumping into a freezing January Brockwell lido!), coming to GoodGym (hooray), and doing first parkruns.

We set off on our run down to Christchurch community garden, a small public space in the middle of Battersea that a group of volunteers are trying to make as welcoming as possible for local people. They have some beautiful mature trees there but a problem with the leaves they drop which are stopping other plants from growing and causing a nuisance on the paths.

When we arrived we found volunteer Nigel waiting for us with loads of bin bags, gloves and some litter pickers, and we got to it. While one group started on the rubbish people had chucked over from the nearby bus stop, the rest of us started clearing leaves - and if you've ever wondered how many bags of leaves a team of 37 people can fill in half an hour (and why wouldn't you?) then the answer is a phenomenal number. Just check out those photos!

We took a short jog over to the local park for our fitness, which this week was all about teamwork. After pairing up we took a quick lap around the park, high fived our partner, and then raced them back to base, before working on some conditioning exercises such a partner pistol squats and back to back holds. There was some pretty impressive balancing going on, and a lot of trust! Nice work everyone.

With the hill waiting for us at the end of the run, we set off for base, and finished the night off with some stretching. Fancy more fun and fitness next week? Then sign up here for your weekly dose of GoodGym Wandsworth. Until then, run happy!