21 GoodGymers ran 4K, took in some of the Hackney Half route and tackled a green fingered new task!

Great weather and great company for our run last night!! Thanks for everyone who came along and worked so hard!

Welcome to our GoodGym first timers, hope you enjoyed joining the Hackney GoodGym Train, hope to see you again next week!!

Sorry about the high pressured name and number start but I blame Renegade Ros!!

With heightened anticipation in the air with the upcoming 21.1km’s of fun on Sunday we put final touches on our Half marathon prep by scouting out a few k’s of the race route on our run to our new task at the Welshpool Estate Community Garden.

With a range of tools and some band new gloves on especially for us we got stuck into a wide range of jobs! Lots of liberal weeding, soil turning, edging, litter picking, trench digging, shrub removal and even a little wooden boarder laying gave us plenty to do in 45 strong minutes of community gardening action.

With the almost toy wheelbarrow working overtime to keep up with the huge volume of weeding and some cheeky Pickaxe action coupled with expert root removal we pushed our time to the limit.

With the circuits avoidance moves played well cleverly to keep legs fresh for a speedy Sunday Race performance! We nipped the short distance back to base where we stretched out and upped our Celebrity Instagram knowledge!!

Thanks for a fun evening!! Hope to see you all at some point on Sunday!! Pre in the Race Village, on route, or post run on the grass outside Here East. We will be flag making and GG Olympic torch constructing to!

Rest Up, Carb up, Run hard and Enjoy!!

Smooth Running

Joel

Well, that was one hell of a social! Thank you to all that came and thank you to the amazing GG Newham for going all out in hosting!

Breaking with tradition I feel we need to mention the guest speech from GG Newham which really words cannot do justice. As they say roll the tape:

Now on to the report:

Heroes

• Huge congratulations to Michael Kidd who smashed the good deeds in October with a huge 22! Congratulations! As we are on tour shout outs to Sharon Prince who topped Newham's good deed table with 8 good deeds!

• For the rest of the results check the attached pic and this link until the end of November and Newham's results here!

• October was a big month - an incredible 21 got their black t-shirts and 4 (Alex (Bristol), Fiona (Bristol), Rosie (Bath), Leanne (York) got their wings with a huge 100 Good Deeds! For a second month a massive shout out to a Lambeth stalwart for hitting 200 good deeds: Marie-Noelle!

• Finally our area awards. This month GG Bristol had the most attendances with 233 and GG Hackney smashed the most new runners in October with 28! Congrats to those areas!

News

• We had our 39th area open and the first university based GoodGym at King's College London on the 24th Oct - they run on Tuesday and everyone is welcome!

• GoodGym Sheffield, Bath and Newham had birthdays turning one, two and three respectively - Happy Birthday!

• We had the last Big 6 race of the year at the Oxford Half marathon, congratulations to the many runners, especially those getting PBs and to Ben Annear who was an official pacer. Looking forwards please check out the Big 6 and Euro Trip for next year:

• Colchester Half marathon - 25th March - Road

• Llanelli marathon and half - 15th April - Road

• GG Euro Trip - Bucharest (HM, 10k, HM-Relay, 3k) - 13th May Road

• Lakeland Trials (M, HM, 10k) - 3rd June - Trail

• White Star Running East Farm (M, HM, 10k + more) - 25 - 27 August - Trail

• Rutland Marathon (M, HM, M-Relay) - 16th September - Trail

• Yorkshire Marathon (M, 10m) - 14th October - Road Make sure you check the event page for discounted entry before 20th December

• Last but not least Steph from GG Bath has made up a GoodGym Calendar consisting of GoodGym-ers abroad in their tshirts! They're selling for £10 and the money is being split between GoodGym and Forever Friends fund for a new cancer center at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Check out the calendar here, and if you want to get a copy please let me know via email. I'll be bringing them to the GoodGym Christmas Party.

Right, before we announce the penultimate winner of the International Pun of the Month it just goes for me to say THANK YOU to all of you that have attended and been part of the socials this year! It's been an amazing year and going on tour has been wonderful too - so many new faces and stories to hear. You really are what makes GoodGym what it is - so here's to every one of you!

Right... here we go... with 28 from 63 votes (thanks to the 32 offline voters) the winner of the International Pun of the Month for October is...

"We Lacquer Pun - Let's Gloss Over That" from GoodGym Newham

Next month we have the Christmas party where the theme is Red and Black (or Red or Black). The date is Friday 8th December and we'll be at the Battersea Arts Centre, home of GG Wandsworth!

Next month we'll have an online only vote for the final International Pun of the Month competition so make sure you have joined the Facebook group or follow me on twitter and vote away. We'll do it first Thursday of the month as always - 7th December. Also this will be the first month where the shortlist will be compiled by Ros who has kindly agreed to assist me with the puns going forwards! Anyone else who wants to get involved with the socials please do let me know - I can't do it forever and it'd be great to get more people on board!

Next social will be on tour in Haringey, see you all again on 11th January 2018! Thanks again everyone! And please get in touch if you want your area to host the social (that includes you Camden, Islington and Westminster too!)

Till 2018!

p.s. Please do join the facebook group here remember to add your area!

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday dear Hounslow, happy birthday to us!

That's right, the Hounslow group is officially ONE. We have taken our first wobbly steps into the world of doing good, and have the quads to prove it. Last night was truly a night of celebrations. We cheered Andy who shares his GoodGymiversary with Hounslow, and Will who was also at the first ever group run. We welcomed the lovely Jeremy to the group for his first ever run - throw a cheer his way, Hounslow! A huge well done to Remy who tackled the horrendous-sounding Luton half and showed that race what for.

After a discussion on the best thing about birthdays - cake, friends, joy, cake, gin, gin and wine,having a whole week off work, cake and more cake - we did our warm up and set off for William Hogarth School. It was a short run there so we did it fairly nippily, looking forward to our indoor task. Unfortunately, when we got there ready to do some flatpack assembly, we found that Ikea had literally not delivered, so we were tasked with raking the outside area which was providing a nice home for many, many leaves.

Undeterred we got stuck in, filling up no less than seven black bin bags to the brim with those leafy pests. Great upper body work out, team. We stopped for a quick photo underneath the apt 'celebration of work' banner and then hit the road again. It was so nice of Hounslow to put on a fireworks display for our first birthday just as we finished the run, and it was only right that we stopped for a quick rest to enjoy them.

But not for long - we had a birthday fitness session to do! We divided up into three teams and played a game of Ana(erobic)grams. The idea was that everybody collects letters by doing exercises - one tuck jump for every good deed, high knees while naming Hounslow tasks, guessing the number of good deeds, planking if you were at the first ever run, high fiving someone whose name began with 'R' and many more - until all 15 were collected. Then came the great unscramble. It really came down to the wire, but it is my pleasure to announce that in first place, winning a round of drinks, was.....the Chizzee Rascals! Way to go Andy, Will, Natasha and Claudia.

All that was left that a trip to the pub for the quiz - kudos Team BetterGym for coming SECOND! - and to eat some cake. Except it didn't quite happen like that, did it? Least said, soonest mended - but check out the photos for the full story.

It's been a cracker of a year, Hounslow. Here's the the next, and the one after, and the one after that. And a huge cheer for all your brilliant personal achievements over the past week.

15 awesome runners ran 4km to help out at the Royal Hill Community Garden!

It was a freakishly warm evening last night, it had rained on and off for most of the day and it looked like it was going to rain some more.. but it didn't stop 15 of you lovely lot from coming out to run and get a good deed done!

We were joined by 4 new runners last night! AMAZING!! Isabella brought along her friend Balazs, I managed to rope in my friend Sally from the gym I work at, and we were also joined by two more lovely ladies Aimee and Lexy! Welcome to the family everyone! Make sure you join our FB group to keep updated with races and other wonderful things that this awesome group gets up to!

We dropped off our stuff and headed over for a quick warm up and then set off through Greenwich town centre and up to Royal Hill! We were greeted by two lovely gentlemen, Patrick and Jonathan who explained the tasks that needed doing.

Ground force!

There was a flower bed at the front which needed some holes to be dug to make room for some plants so a few people got stuck in with that. Vickie took a small group to the dark outback to rake up some leaves and put them in the compost. And the final group were tasked with a little landscape design project of making a heather bed which involved building a DIY dry stone wall out of bricks and other rubble they could find... Apparently according to Emma, well, Emma's granny, dry stone walling is an actual hobby and you can enroll yourself in a course to learn how to build one as it is quite an art form! But these guys did not need a course in dry stone walling... oh no! They just cracked on and it looked BEAUTIFUL. Alan Titchmarsh better watch his back!

15 minutes later and the group at the front had successfully planted the plants! WOOHOO! Next job was some bulbs to be planted in and around them. Patrick showed them the first one and then left the rest to them!

Everyone was doing a killer job! The leaves had all been swept away. The bulbs had been planted and finally the heather bed was looking absolutely stunning! So it was time to say our goodbyes, have a group photo and head back for some more RUNNING! Yay!

We had a little jog back to the uni and had loads of time to spare! And since the run to the garden wasn't very far, there was more running on the agenda! But that's what you're here for right :)

Laps, laps and more laps!

As I always say, speed work is SO important. I don't do it enough myself. And chances are you probably don't either! If you run 3 times a week, you should try and aim for one of those runs to involve some kind of interval training where your heart rate goes up and comes down multiple times! It gets you faster over time and really pushes your lactate threshold so you can run faster for longer! Which is ultimately what everyone wants, right? So.......

On the cards was 4x 2 laps fast 2 laps slow. 1 lap is approx 300m so to run round it 16 times would be about 4.8km which is a long way! But instead of making everyone do this, we did it for as long as it took the fastest person to complete it. The key to this one is running the fast laps at a pace where you can maybe say about 2 or 3 words at a time so a nice controlled effort and then running the slow ones REAAALLLYY slow as an active recovery.

Long story short... everyone did AMAZING. It was great to see you all really push yourselves and put in so much effort! And of course so great to hear the cheers for our super speedy Amy so everyone could stop! Ha! That was a tough session, probably one of the hardest we've done so newbies please don't be scared off!!!!

We had a nice little stretch and called it a night :)

Thanks so much everyone! You got so much done at the garden and the task owners were SO pleased at what you all achieved so well done! Also great job with those intervals, I know it was hard but you absolutely smashed it!!!! See you next time!

We had a Hounslow first to kick off the night yesterday evening - a massive congratulations to [Andy] who is the first of the group to reach that 50 good deed milestone! Give him a huge cheer for this achievement. To celebrate there was cake, lots and lots of cake. We were also treated to a fabulous honey cake made by Remy (who had also run a barnstorming half marathon at the weekend) to mark Rosh Hashanah. Shana Tova everyone!

We were also given our cards by Dave for our team to take part in Hounslow's Beat the Street, welcomed lovely GG ers Alex from Ealing, and Helen and Jordan from Wandsworth, and were very happy to have Jennifer back in the group.

We will rock you

With our task waiting for us just across the road, we had a quick topical chat about our favourite celebrations - Christmas, Passover, St Patrick's day, Norwegian national day and, erm, pancake day all topped the list - and then hopped over to Turnham Green to find Jan waiting for us with tools, bulbs, plants and gloves ready to get stuck in.

Apparently we have had lots of compliments about our previous job on the green where we cleared a huge meadow of thistles, so it was great to move onto the next stage of the job. With Alex and Jennifer tackling the central area planting some beautiful pots, two other teams spread out over the different areas to get to grips with the weeds. The light was fading quickly, but with some headtorches and sheer grit we cleared the rockeries and planted packs of tulip bulbs which we will admire next spring as we do our sprints.

Tulips, two legs

Job done, we moved on to our fitness session, kicking off with some Indian file round the park to get our heart rates up. We then had a quick game of 'grab the light' (the name needs some work) before moving on to the real session, which was a tough one. We concentrated on three areas - core, glutes and arms. Starting with glutes we did six exercises for 45 seconds, including lunges, squats, power skips and hip thrusts before moving onto abs. For that we used the benches to smash out planks, holds, plank jumps and side planks as well as, of course, dead bugs. Finally we tackled those difficult upper body drills with press ups, tricep dips and even an arm wrestle.

After all that, all that was left was to do a good stretching session and to eat cake. Ever run should end with some. Sign up for next week's run, where we will put those beat the street cards to good use.

One big task, seven excellent runners, 180 seconds of plank and six confusing maps!

It all began at Chiswick Town Hall, as shown by the GoodGym poster on the wall which has categorically never covered any other poster on the noticeboard. Just saying.

You've been dong some great running this week, Hounslow. A big well done to Adam who has been notching up the runs, with a new parkrun PB on Saturday. Must be the beetroot bread! A hat tip too to Jo and Andy who are sailing through the good deeds. Don't forget that we might have our first 50th good deed to celebrate next Wednesday, so stick around after the run for a little fun to mark this great milestone.

This week's task was leafleting for Waterman's Art Centre. Not everybody's favourite task, but a very useful one for the charity. This weekend is the centre's River Weekender - a festival inspired for the river packed with free events for the whole community. Our job was to spread the word in the local area, and it began, as all good things do, with a run.

After a quick warm up featuring a rather natty side hop ("isn't this just...running?"), we set off on the 2k run down to Waterman's. But not before finding out our favourite condiments! There was no stand out winner this week, but ketchup, Lea & Perrins (other brands are available), dijon mustard, mint sauce (from the veggie), pepper, chutney and BBQ were all contenders. Lovely stuff.

A nice speedy run later we arrived at reception to be presented with a bulging trolley full of leaflets and a series of highlighted maps. Cue several minutes of trying to figure out what to do next ("isn't this the same map? Turn it upside down. No, the other way"). We soon cracked it though, and split up into groups to start putting leaflets through doors, into hands, pubs and travelodges before meeting up towards the end of the run to smash out a few door to door sprints.

We finished on a bit of a high after having delivered countless leaflets and enjoying a nice stretch when we were brought up short by the angriest flamenco teacher in town. No we didn't move your poster, mister. Still, we had the plank off to make us feel better, and what a plank off it was. The seconds ticked by and everybody was going strong - who was going to emerge victorious? Some great work from everybody, but this week the crown goes to Andy with an impressive 2 min 37 plank. Wowzer!

Next week it's going to be all sorts of fun planting bulbs and hopefully we'll have something to celebrate too. Sign up here for your Wednesday dose of goodness and fitness!