With the nights drawing in, it was great to see so many of you with headtorches last night - well done team. Don't let the darker evenings and chill in the air put you off - there's nothing better to warm you up but it's easy to lose motivation. Don't forget you will always have a group of mates ready to run with you on a Wednesday!

News

Give a cheer for Charlotte who came along to her first ever GoodGym group run last night!

Don't forget about our big parkrun takeover on the 17th November - we need YOU! Loads of roles available, sign up here.

Paint it Black

A few weeks ago we had gone down to Ealing Road Church, a community space which is also used as a homeless shelter, foodbank and clothesbank, and sanded down the railings outside the building ready for painting. So our job last night was so start the big job itself.

So after a quick warm up which got our heart rates going, we did a poll to find out which national cuisine we would choose if we could only have one forever more. I'm pleased to report, without a hint of bias, that Italian came out on top, followed by Thai, Indian, British and...sweets (Beth!)

After a nice steady 3k run down there, we arrived to find a series of paint-filled cups, brushes and plastic sheets ready for us to get started straight away. It was a challenging (black paint + black railings + night) but a satisfying one as the team inched its way along producing lovely shiny and rust-free railings. That is really going to smarten the place up, and with Roger the Pastor managing a very busy community space, this was one less thing for him to do.

After tidying up after ourselves we opted to do our fitness session just outside the church on a nice bit of pedestrianised street. After a quick photo shoot from a gentleman who wanted to send our picture to his daughter studying in Newcastle (spread the GoodGym word people!) we started on a pacing drill which saw us vary our running from 10-100% effort, followed by some conditioning exercises and of course finishing off with our weekly one minute plank.

It was a super speedy run home and all that was left to do was stretch out our muscles and look forward to next week when we'll be litter picking for a residents' association. See you then lovely people!

With the weather finally at a more comfortable temperature to run in, 18 runners met up for our mid-week GoodGym last night with a great task and a 5k run ahead of us.

It was so good to see so many new faces in Hounslow, and we hope you'll all be back next week! Ladies and gents of GoodGym, please give a huge cheer for Alessandro, Jon, Afzaal, William and Alberto.

If you're in the mood for more good news, then why not head down to the GoodGym social tonight. This is a monthly get together for all different GG areas, and a great chance to hear all the lovely things everybody has been up to. See you there I hope!

We had been asked to run down to Kew Bridge, where we would be helping with a shoreline clean up plus some other useful jobs, but first we had to warm up. After some high knees, heel flicks and all the other usual suspects, we had a quick questionnaire to find out our worst habits. Procrastination was by far top of the list, but timekeeping and biting nails also featured highly. It could definitely have been worse!

We arrived at the slipway by Kew Bridge after a steady 2k run to find buckets, litterpickers and tools waiting for us, and got stuck straight into clearing the plastic that had washed up there. This is a busy and popular part of the river for canoeists, paddleboarders and boaters, but is increasingly unpleasant with the amount of plastic chucked into the water. While most of the group set about clearing it, we also tackled the vegetation that was growing there, and started creating a pathway of small stones and gravel down to the water ready for the Thames Tidefest at the beginning of September.

After forty minutes of hard work, it was looking much clearer and we had the makings of a very confident path, so we downed tools, waved goodbye to Peter, and set off back to Turnham Green for our fitness session. This week we tackled abs, with a toughish ten minute blast featuring planks, scissors, reverse crunches, sit ups and dead bugs.

Don't forget that our friends at Thames Trademen's RC have offered us a free kettlebells class on Thursday 30th August - if you're interested then let me know so we can give them an idea of numbers.

Great to see you all last night and well done on an important job really well done. Next week we're off to a local school to help out, sign up here for more Wednesday doing good and getting fitter.

With blue skies as far as the eye could see and not one but two tasks ahead of us last night, GoodGym was hot and ready to trot!

We kicked off the night getting cosy in a very warm room at the BAC with a lot to celebrate.

We had some new faces along for their very first group run last night. A massive Wandsworth welcome to Em, Jilly, Lucy - lovely to have you join us!

We were also fresh from our silver medal position at the GoodGym Olympics the previous Saturday - a huge well done to everybody that came along, cheered and raced. Go team Wandsworth!

Don't forget there's an unmissable chance to socialise and hear all about the amazing things everybody has been doing and the monthly social next week. It's an extra special one as it's the first time that Wandsworth will have hosted, so let's get as many of us together to welcome the rest of GG as possible. It will be at 6:30 on the 12th July, venue TBC.

With two tasks ahead of us, we headed outside to do our warm up. And also to discuss our favourite cocktails and mocktails, because that's important too. The winner was far and away espresso martinis, but we also love mojitos, dark and stormys, margaritas and, um, beer.

We started off the run together, with our first stop at Battersea Park Library. We've all seen many of our local libraries being shut or having their opening hours reduced as they suffer from funding pressure, so we reckon it's important to help out these amazing community centres when we can. Our job last night, under the watchful eye of James the Librarian, was to tidy up and weed the area outside the main building. It may have been a library with only one storey (sorry) but there was plenty to be done, so we left half the group there and the rest of us ran over to The Venue, a community centre which hosts loads of local events and community projects, to help out there. The job here was to empty two rooms of stuff that needed chucking out, so we immediately got ourselves into our fav formation - human chain - and got cracking.

Half an hour later the two groups were reunited, but our job was not done. The van that was meant to be there to receive all the bits from the Venue didn't turn up, so we ended up carrying it round to Space Max, a charity which helps families living with overcrowding in their flats.

With such a busy night we didn't have time for a huge fitness session, so we stopped where we were and smashed out a quick EMOM (every minute, on the minute). The idea is we started with 5 reps of three different exercises, increasing it every minute until we were trying to fit in 10 of each within the time slot. Tough! Luckily we had the self-appointed Junior League of GoodGym there to challenge us, cheer us on, count down the timings and generally act as our support crew. Nice work.

There was just a hot and sticky run ahead of us, and one little chin scratcher of a hill, so off we went to finish off our session. Well done everybody, that was an awful lot of good done in a short amount of time. Next week it's our final visit to the Grub Club, a local community café, to finish up the decorating job there ready for their big opening. Sign up here, gang!.

With the sun out, a great task ahead of us, and some lovely new runners, last night GoodGym really found its happy pace!

Team, show some Wandsworth love to Elle, Timothy, Oli, Matthew, Stephanie, Madison and Beth!

After our weekly round up, which featured a round of applause for Morag, Chris and Paul (in absentia) for some great racing over the weekend in London and Swansea and a reminder that the Goodgym Olympics is THIS SATURDAY! Have a look here for all the details and do come along to cheer on the Wandsworth team and for the social afterwards even if you're not competing!

It was hot, hot, hot last night, but we still needed to warm up our muscles ready for the 6k run ahead of us, so we headed outside to begin with lunges, squats, fast feet and other dynamic exercises. With our heart rates up, we were ready to head to our task, but not before finding out everybody's worst habit. Now, there were several of us who are terrible at time management, one naughty tupperware misuser, those who constantly hit snooze and don't empty the bins on time, but by far and away our biggest collective bad habit is biting our nails! If that's as bad as it gets, I think we're alright, Wandsworth.

Our task tonight was at the beautiful Paradise cooperative garden, right opposite Wandsworth prison. This once abandoned piece of land was taken over by a charitable organisation, and the hard work of their volunteers has transformed it into a beautiful small-holding including an orchard, poly-tunnels, raised vegetable beds, a fish-pond, bush-craft area and community celebration area with pizza oven and running water. The place is much loved by the community but relies on volunteers to keep it running, which is where we came in.

It was a warm and sunny run to the site, and we stopped along the way to knock out a few wall sits and one legged squats. Once we arrived we split up into three groups to tackle the list of jobs. While the first team started immediately on spreading the wood chip all over the pathways, the second took on the massive watering job on the beautiful raised beds. The third group's job was to weed all the areas around the plants, and just half an hour later the place looked so much tidier, well-hydrated and re-chipped.

After a little jog over to the common we started on our short but not-so-sweet fitness session. Our pyramid workout involved doing a series of different exercises in decreasing reps until we reached one sprint, before having a little breather and working our way back up again. Short bursts of high energy like this is great for increasing our aerobic capacity and burning calories.

We finished off the evening with a nice steady run back home (downhill until that last stretch) ending up hot, sweaty but having worked hard both for ourselves and our local community. Way to go! Sign up here for next week's run when we'll be lending a hand in Battersea Library's outside area.