8 fantastic Goodgymmers came out to play for a run and multiple tasks at Baby Basics Leicester, for our second visit after everyone enjoyed the first time so much.

Baby Basics Leicester work with midwives, health visitors and other professional groups to provide support by donating essentials directly where it is most needed. So much work goes into sorting donations, checking items work or fit together safely and much more hard work.

We split into 3 teams, with team 1 cot building, to check all the pieces, they successfully built 2 which will be send out to families in need.

Team 2 sorted toiletries for packages sent out to mums, then came to join forces with team 3 un-tagging blankets and sorting clothes into sizes, boys or girls and hat size sorting. We were also joined with one of Baby Basics hard working volunteers who was blown away by he concept of GoodGym.

Tonight was Daniel first group session, not his first run of the day after a speedy 20 miler this morning but his first Good deed, apart from him running with me while I check out graffiti and cycle signs in the local area.

We welcomed back Laura and Lisette who used to Goodgym before I came along, lovely reunion for the group and really good to meet you both, enjoy half term hopefully see you again.

Weldone team wonderful way to spend an evening doing good for our community and getting fit at the same time, take care.

Twelve runners ran 166 miles (between them!) to run around Leicestershire!

The challenge was simple, to sign up and contribute some miles towards running a virtual Leicestershire Round, the 100 mile route devised by the Leicestershire Footpath Association.

By the weekend we were getting up close already to completing the task so I did some research to see what the perimeter of the entire county was... 164 miles - challenge extended!

Between the 11 GG Leicester runners we rocked up to 160 miles for the week, an impressive effort with welcome contributions from everyone! On Tuesday, Nurjehan from GG Haringey signed up to the challenge and left a message "donating" us 10k she had run for a GG Birmingham session during the day! What a stroke of luck, those miles ticked us over the 164 mile mark so between us we've run around the entire county during the week!

Extra marks for Katy who actually went along and found one of the Leicestershire Round signs that form part of the route on one of her runs. Great to see Nicola M and Nicola P back taking part too!

Well done all. Keep getting out there in the fresh air, staying safe but staying fit.

Get yourself signed up to the next challenge here and you could win yourself an Easter Egg!

HD

20 runners ran 12km to help The Rotary Clubs of Leicester and Leicester Novus raise awareness of World Polio Day

Well it's hard to know where to start, what an amazing evening that really was a privilege to be involved in. After being invited to get involved in this event by Leicester Rotary Club President Chris Saul over the summer it sounded like something incredibly worthwhile to be part of but also a way for our runners to explore new parts of our local community. And boy did it deliver!

A great turnout of GoodGym regulars were delighted to be joined by a swarm of runners joining us for the first time, a warm GG welcome to Rae, Muriel, Arlene, Tina, Kelly, Jenny, Stewart and Chris, we hope you enjoyed the evening. Do come and join us for a group run soon! We also welcomed back Ashley and Nick just two days after their GG group run debut.

The crux of the evening was to raise awareness of World Polio Day and the Rotary Club's international mission to eradicate polio. A service took place at the Leicester Cathedral to mark the occasion while we ran. Our job was to deliver purple crocus corms to other places of worship around the city. Our first leg took us to the Swaminarayan Temple on Gipsy Lane where we were warmly welcomed to an absolutely incredible building, the purple illumination making it look even more stunning. After some chat and pictures we set off on leg 2 heading to the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurudwara where once again we were welcomed with open arms and more fantastic purple illuminations, decorations, ties and turbans! We enjoyed some fruit and samosas while a member of the Gurudwara and Rotary Leicester Novus told us about the Rotary campaign to eradicate polio - internationally they've raised $1.2 BILLION and now Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries in the world left to eradicate the disease.

Leg 3 took us down to the Masjid Umar Mosque where once again we were warmly welcomed. Unfortunately we were behind on our planned timings so had to decline yet more hospitality so we could head back to the cathedral and only be 25 minutes later than planned - sorry about that folks!

As we arrived back at Leicester Cathedral we were greeted by ringing bells and the Presidents of both Rotary Clubs, Chris Saul and Maya Vansia who thanked us for our efforts.

An amazing evening, I'll add more pictures (and probably words) to the report as I get them as so many people took amazing photos.

Thank you everyone for coming along, please share this report and the pictures on your social media channels - the whole point is to raise awareness of the fight to end polio! We have a Facebook page GoodGym Leicester and our Twitter is @GGLeicester where this report is posted if you wish to share. Hopefully we've also made more people aware of the great work GoodGym do in Leicester and we might see a few new tasks and runners in the future!

Thanks to Dave and Stu for leading us around, Jimmy for back marking, Mel and Muriel for taking the crocus corms around to the venues for us and everyone who took such fantastic pictures en route!

Happy running, HD

Six runners swam/ran 6km to start work on the Austin Jackson Memorial Garden for St Matthew's Big Local

Looking out of the window this afternoon I had fears of logging on to the GoodGym website to print off the register and finding that I'd have nobody coming along. Luckily, five hardy souls were still signed up to come along and brave the weather including first timer Caroline. Congratulations on a very soggy first good deed Caroline, hopefully the sun will shine on your next one!

The proper hardcore rain of the afternoon thankfully relented come 6pm and we ran in a mixture of cloudy skies, drizzle and the occasional shower burst across to the St Matthew's Estate where we got stuck into part 1 of a two week project clearing a large border. In arguably the best conditions of the day (not saying much!) we wielded our spades and managed to fill nine large bin bags full from the overgrown border. While it looked a little bit "work in progress" when our time was up we've certainly laid the ground work to make it look brilliant when we return next week.

We then made use of the fantastic running track adjacent to our task and completed two easy laps and an effort lap in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions with a short recovery in between. Just as we were about to leave we discovered that we had a footballing talent within our midst as Sha-Ronaldo showed us a trick shot of incredible skill. As she went to return a ball to the lads playing on the pitch in the middle of the running track she carefully picked up the ball and volleyed it back in their direction...impressive to this point. However, she managed to hit the post upon which the security cameras were mounted sending the ball back over our heads, out of the running track and into the road leaving us all rolling around in stitches! Wonderful stuff!

As rain picked up pace, so did we, as we headed purposefully back to base to dry off.

A brilliant effort tonight everyone, thank you so much for braving such vile conditions to do some good in our local community!

HD