Welcome 18 Hardcore heroes were out in force tonight (despite the cold and the rain) to help Santa on his rounds in Crewe collecting money for 40 local charities. It was great to have Alex from GoodGym Central with us tonight. How brave (or possibly slightly mad!) were you in your shorts!! Go Alex!! It was great to welcome Sasha back for her second task. We hope you had a great night!

Kudos A huge well done to everyone who took part in the Nantwich Santa Dash last weekend. I’m sure you all looked fabulous in your Santa outfits. And huge kudos to each of you for coming out in the grotty weather so close to Christmas to do good in the community. You’re all superstars!!

The Main Event It was fabulous to see so many people tonight at GoodGym and lovely to see the festive attire, hats and sparkle! You really were a sight to beho-ho-hold!

Tonight’s task was joining Santa on his rounds as we went door to door collecting money for lots of local charities. We did our warm-up on the extremely festive square to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’. We basically had a bit of a festive boogie (with some sensational dance moves going on, it has to be said!!). We then ran across town to meet Santa on his rounds wishing everyone we passed a Merry Christmas. We had some lovely smiley responses, some reciprocated good wishes and lots of tooting horns!

Santa was delighted to see so many of us rock up to help. We all donned our high-viz and set out with our collection tubs on our mission to raise as much money as possible. The weather didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits and we happily went from door to door with Christmas music filling the streets while Santa followed us on his float stood up his chimney.

The spirit of Christmas and community was all around as we collected. Lovely people at the doors, children with wide eyes waiting in anticipation for Santa to pass by and a group of volunteers out in the cold and the rain giving up their time for local causes. If this couldn’t get you in the festive spirit, nothing could!

Time passed too quickly, and it was soon time to head back. We returned to the square and as we ran back, it was great to hear some lovely comments. Amanda said she’d never felt so Christmassy and Phil said it had really put him in the festive spirit (by his own admission, a feat he thought was impossible!).

Our fitness session consisted of some Santa squats (inc jump down the chimney of course), turkey feet, holly heel flicks, Snowmen Star jumps and sleigh ride sprints! It’s fair to say, we did a decent amount of exercise on our task tonight – well done everyone!

It was a real pleasure to spend some time with you all in Hops bar for our social. We played the somewhat confusing ‘left right’ game. Suzanne and Alex triumphed! We played Snowman pass the parcel (all 24 layers!). Pam took the star prize on that one (a no expense spared plastic spinning top if I remember correctly!!). Amanda wowed us all with her cracker joke knowledge! And, the showstopper of the night must be Ginnie’s party trick. If you didn’t witness it in person, have a close inspection of the pictures and you’ll be blown away at what she can do with her arm!!!! Unfortunately for you, I can’t remember Phil’s little sonnet about his toes but I think the words ‘trim my tallons’ were amongst them! It was a lovely night filled with fun, friendship, laughter and for me, the perfect way to start Christmas.

Thank You I’ve moved the thank you to the end tonight as I feel I have so much to say thanks for this week. Thank you for the extremely thoughtful and most unexpected gifts that you bought for me. I really am so touched and unusually for me, felt a little speechless! I truly feel I gain so much more than I give and that it’s each of you that I need to thank for being such lovely, awesome and thoroughly decent human beings. It’s only been a few weeks since GoodGym Crewe started but during that time, I’ve met so many lovely people, all of whom I now consider friends and my little GoodGym family. Wednesday nights with you guys genuinely are the highlight of my week. Thank you for your commitment, support and just simply for being amazing.

Huge thank you as always to Pam and Barry for being fabulous back markers again tonight. A big thank you to everyone who filled a shoe box for the elderly – they were very gratefully received, and I know they’ll be putting a smile on someone’s face this Christmas.

And of course, a huge thank you to Crewe Rotary for allowing us to be part of their ‘Team Santa’ this evening. We hope we made a difference and we will be back next year!! Extra special thanks to Ben for helping to make tonight possible and especially for the pre-task chips which were gratefully received by a freezing Alex and myself!

Have the most amazing Christmas everyone! Take care and I can’t wait to see you all in 2020!! Everything for our January tasks will be on social media, so keep a look out on there for our first task of 2020.

GoodGym Crewe has had an amazing start and that’s down to each of you. As Alex said during one of our meetings yesterday, if we can achieve all this in the winter, imagine what the summer will bring! Here’s to an amazing 2020!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Lots of love to you all Nicola xxxx

Welcome Another fab turnout tonight and great to welcome new runner, Sasha. We hope you had a great first experience of GoodGym and hope to see you back again soon.

Kudos Huge well done to everyone who took part in the Dales Dash last weekend. Some fantastic personal achievements! Big shout out for Claire who got a course PB as well as being first placed in her age category. Big Kudos to Alex for doing his 50th Parkrun last weekend and to Phil who did the Oulton Park half marathon last weekend too. And last but not least, huge kudos to everyone who donned their trainers and got outside this week!

Thank You Huge thank you as always to Pam and Barry for being fabulous back markers and to Rachel for being on photo duty this evening when I couldn’t be in two places at once! Thank you to Kate at Motherwell for having us this evening. We'll be back!

The Main Event We warmed up on the memorial square this week because it was looking very festive and pretty. The evening was kicked off with a game of ‘Sharky Sharky, Fishy Fishy’ aka ‘Grinchy Grinchy, Elfie Elfie’ (it is Christmas don't you know!). Some were a little more competitive than others (mentioning no names…. Dan!). Fair to say that everyone seemed to enjoy regressing back to their youth for a few brief minutes! ;-) (ps - Dan, we wouldn't change you!)

We then ran to the task with the usual banter and chatter. We were grateful to get into a warm room out of the chilly night air! Our task tonight was to clear the room ready for decorators. The room was lovely and cosy but a little too cosy for 18 people, so we split the group into two. One group went outside and did a fitness session with Nicola while the others stayed inside and used their muscles and then we swapped halfway through the evening. Outside, we did a Christmas themed fitness session and as it happens, we were on Crewe’s busiest road, so this meant we were subject to the occasional horn toot!! We even had a couple of passing pedestrians join in with the push-ups (they weren’t half bad either!). I think we were a sight to behold tonight whilst we were doing ‘ski-jumps’ in the middle of the pavement on Crewe's equivalent of the strip! Many hands truly do make light work and the task was done in good time, so we headed back to base for our cool down and stretches.

Thanks everyone for another fab session. Same time next week? ;-)

Have a great week. Look after yourselves and keep being amazing (don't mean that in a cheesy way.... you really are!). Love Nicola xx

PS – It’s Christmaaaaaaaas! That means it’s most definitely acceptable (and highly encouraged) to wear anything remotely festive – santa hats, Christmas leggings, sparkly boppers…….

Welcome

Awesome to meet 4 lovely GoodGym newbies tonight. Welcome to the tribe Rosemary, Ed, Rachel & Karen We hope you had a fab first experience of GoodGym. We loved having you and hope you'll be back for more very soon! Now that you've done your very first deed, you can order your GoodGym T-shirt. Hope to see you modelling the trademark Red Tee on your next jaunt out with us.

Kudos

So many of you took part in the Wilmslow 10K this weekend. Well done everyone on such a great achievement, keep up the great work! As always, huge kudos to Pam & Barry for being our back markers again this week. You do such a cracking job - you're hired! (haha).

The Task

We started our evening with a decent dose of chocolate fingers - well, on these dark cold nights, the extra energy is definitely a necessity ;-) Talking of cold, the weather was definitely airing on the side of chilly tonight, so we started with a fun warm up - with no other way to describe it than the 'hat, scarf and glove game'! We split the group into two teams who formed a 'not so orderly' queue! lol! The first runner had to sprint to a cone where they then had to don the winter 'kit' before running back to their teammate and transferring the kit to them as quickly as possible as well as dishing out a warm up exercise for the rest of the team to carry out while the next runner headed down to the cone. There were moments of chaos, confusion but mostly laughter as team 2 brought home the prize (well, actually, there wasn't any prize -just applause from their teammates! - sorry team 2!). We then headed out on our run to the task. A shorter run tonight but every bit as enjoyable with lots of great chat in both directions (and only a smidgen of rain on the outward leg). We had a lovely welcome at the food-bank from Cheryl & Rob, both of whom are pivotal in running the Crewe food-bank, which does amazing work for the less fortunate within our community. We split the group into 3 sub-groups - the 'sorters', the 'gophers' and the 'packers'. Not forgetting Ben who was chief brew maker and made a fab one at that (it was just the waitress that let the side down - dishing out coffees instead of teas and vice versa - yes, that was me!). We sorted cans, packets, boxes and bottles all into date order and various boxes ready for distribution. Everyone did a splendid job and worked with a smile on their face. We sorted out shed loads of donations - all in just 50 minutes!!! Cheryl and Rob from the Centre said it would have taken them a long time (ie, days) to do what we achieved in just 50 minutes! Teamwork really does make the dream work! ;-) Once we'd nailed the task, we headed out to pound the streets of Crewe once more. On our way back, we stopped off at the now named 'Rocky Steps' and finished our run with some circuits. We split the group into 4 groups and did the work out in rotation, changing every two minutes. We did hill reps (with the best hill we had), wall push-ups, tricep dips and step ups. Everyone took part and I think it's fair to say that everyone got a sweat on! We headed back to base for our cool down and goodbyes. I hope everyone left with the same warm, fuzzy feeling I did :-)

Thanks for another fab night everyone. We have another great task lined up for next week - hope you'll join us!

Have a great week. Take care and keep being awesome!

Nicola xxx