Spring was most definitely both in the air and in our step last night as we met for our weekly Hounslow group run.

Along with lovely regular Andy, we said hello to two new runners, Joanna and Vikma who joined us for their first GG run. Throw these ladies a cheer!

Andy is bossing the heroes page, topping the league for distance, cheers and good deeds - but watch out, Lily and Toni are not far behind! Cheers all round.

We discussed the upcoming GoodGym Olympics, which will be taking place on 10th June, sign up now: https://www.goodgym.org/races/goodgym-olympics to show the other boroughs that west London is best London. Holler!

We managed to resist the party that was just kicking off in the next door room, despite glimpses of bowls of wotsits and bottle of wine, and headed out for a quick warm up before our run. With a few ski jumps and grapevines to get that blood pumping, we set off for our favourite church-come-homeless shelter. It was a nice steady pace for the two miles there, broken up halfway with a little chasing competition which saw us all gasping for breath.

Roger the Pastor was waiting for when we got there, and the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen got our noses twitching. As a little incentive (bribe? thank you?) he let us know that he had cooked our dinner to take back with us after we had finished the jobs. Best. Task. Ever.

With that in mind, we were off like rockets. Our task was to move down a room full of chairs from the top of the building to the bottom so that they could be loaded on to the van. A human chain was quickly formed (efficiency!) and we soon stared shifting those chairs in what turned out to be a pretty effective upper body work out. Kudos to Andy taking the tricksy stairway position, hope you're not feeling it too much today. Vikma did not pause for breath as she scooted through the building piled high with chairs, while Joanna nailed the top spot at the head of the chain - does this count as an arms day?!

By the time we had shifted well over 100 chairs, we collected our warm and delicious takeaway dinners and set off on our run back. New business idea - Deliveroo on foot! Quick, someone get the copyright. With another two miles under our belt, we stopped off at the park to smash out a quick abs blast. A strong core is essential for a good running style - it stop unnecessary twisting, helps you keep a good strong form, and makes your running style more efficient, less prone to injury, and faster. After a round of planks, side planks, Russian twists, leg holds and crunches, we were well and truly pooped. And that dinner was calling to us, so with a few stretches, we headed back to our starting point, where the party was less raging, and more - over. Good job we gave it the swerve.

Next week we have a great new task lined up. Don't miss out on doing some good and getting fit - Hounslow needs YOU. Sign up here:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-hands-and-legs-in-hounslow

Run report by Ben Cooper!

22 green-fingered runners ran 4km to bring back some nature at St Joseph's Primary School!

Tonight’s task saw us make a return to St Joseph’s Primary School – Neil’s place of work. Give Neil a cheer for setting it up.

Matt and Deb were making their debuts, and thankfully the rain held off for them as well. And Imogen also made a comeback.

The group was further enhanced with the presence of new trainer Ben A, from soon-to-be GoodGym Cardiff. Ben had been to Wandsworth, on Monday, and Barnet, on Tuesday, before finally landing the royal gig – Greenwich. You know you’ve made it, when the starting point is in a World Heritage Site!

Proceedings started on fishy note, and no I am not referring to the smell of Ben P’s hairspray. Sarah, GoodGym Greenwich Trainer, asked the group what their favourite sea animal was. It seemed to stump our resident medical student, Amy. Obviously, she is more at land with working with humans (we hope).

Before Sarah closed the intro, Ben P stepped forward and said he had something to say. Sarah admitted an audible gasp - ‘What was this usurper doing!?’

HAPPY 50th GOOD DEED!

Alas, it was our esteemed trainer’s 50th good deed, and unknown to Sarah, a small clandestine group had been planning some festivities as we couldn’t let the occasion pass without acknowledging it aka ritually embarrassing her.

When I say, clandestine group don’t think ‘meeting under the cover of darkness, in the Old Royal Naval College Undercroft, wearing red robes and chanting’ but rather Alex setting up a separate messenger group.

Unfortunately, most shops have not yet seen the potential growth market of stocking 50th good deeds products, so we plastered Sarah with a 50th badge and helium balloon. Hope we haven’t given you a complex about how old you look. ;-)

The temperature was dropping so Ben A took us a few warm-up dialling up the exertion knob from 1-5. Ben A’s use of the word shimmy also piqued people’s interest with style points going to Brin for his interpretation of a shimmy. Watching him reminded me of the famous French-American fencer Maitre Michel Alaux.

Setting off we resembled some sort of weird hen/stag/birthday/running group mash-up with Sarah in her full regalia. A short run along the river; we do like to show off our * cough * royal borough when other GoodGym tourists come to visit, and we were there.

Headteacher Mouquet informed the group that 1 in 5 school children don’t have a house garden. Hence, the importance of connecting children back to nature. Putting the green back into Greenwich as we always like to do, we got straight to it.

Gareth had kindly brought some spare pair of gloves, although Charlotte and Mridula looked dubiously at them - Black and latex. More fitting for handling corpses than carnations.

Isabella, Linda and Marta picked up the paintbrushes and started painting the fence green. Marta did some touching up of a few plants as well for good measure.

Working on their hands and knees (Sarah is a hard task master), the rest of the group split up into lines do some planting – lavender, carnations and pansies. Alex was assigned the chief compost bag ‘shakey’ ‘shakey’ distributor.

Overhearing a few conversations did expose a perhaps worrying lack of gardening knowledge in the group. For example, ‘we need something to dig a hole’. The top answer you were looking for was a spade, and another conversation debating the difference between a trowel and a trident. From my little knowledge of Greek mythology, I am sure Poseidon, God of the Sea is not pictured with a trowel.

No sooner from fence we had came we were compotted. Great work everyone! It’d be great to see the look on all those children faces when they come into school and see plants painted green. Ha ha.

Then we offshooted back for our fitness session. But not before the obligatory group photo. Ben A even cajoled Sarah to get in the photo. No hiding this week boss.

Ben A led the fitness session. We did some speed interval training around the quadrant (we have quadrants in Greenwich) running at 50% halfway, and then cranking it up to 100%.

Everyone pushed hard and there was still time to play a game like British Bulldog but more in keeping with the fish theme, called Fishy Fishy.

Ben A: "Fishy, fishy swimming in the sea" All: "Sharky, sharky you can't catch me"

Ben A was a shark swimming around trying to catch the fishes. There was also a curious seaweed dance that Ben A briefly showed us. Expect and hope that comes out at future GoodGym Cardiff socials!

With sharks circling, some fishes were swimming too fast and Jo got caught in some cross streams. Jo hope your knee is ok.

Appetites found and how – thanks Ben A, we embarked to the Cutty Sark pub for our monthly social. Alex had secured the Crow’s Nest room, at the top of the Cutty Sark, with great views looking out on the river. Pure Bliss. And Sarah got up the stairs spritely for someone of her rapidly increasing years.

And with most people picking the fish n chips option, the fish theme just wouldn’t go away. The injured Christian also joined the group for the meal bringing some much missing decorum to the evening.

Ignoring Sarah’s 50th get-up, perhaps the oddest sight of the evening was seeing Brin drink out of something other than his now legendary water bottle. However, the change in receptacle clearly seem to knock him off course as he couldn’t seem to find his words at points.

Festivities included Ben C delivering a short quiz titled ‘Know your Place’, testing Sarah’s GoodGym knowledge. Evidently, Sarah does write all her own puns as she demonstrated nearly perfect recall when called on to complete the pun phrases.

Ben P, who had been covertly collecting signatures for Sarah’s card throughout the whole session, presented Sarah with her card which had some great group photos from previous tasks splashed on the front.

And Vickie, designer and socks/trainers combo trendsetter had made Sarah a little artwork.

Following the food, the kind staff, at the Cutty Sark brought, out a cake as made by Mridula. This cake had criss-crossed it way across London from home to work and to its final resting place, the pub’s fridge. Co-worker Helen confessed she had opened the fridge, at their workplace, to admire said cake but she wouldn’t be drawn if she had licked the icing or not.

Whoever, buys the movie rights to Mridula’s anecdote about getting the cake to the pub has got a sure-fire blockbuster on their hands. (PG12 owing to lots of mild peril scenes and rude innuendo about buns.)

Thanks for visiting Ben A! Car-you-diff Ben A some love here. On tonight’s evidence, GoodGym Cardiff is going to go swimmingly!

Mridula have a nice holiday. You can find a link to the cake recipe here.

Lastly, like the Murder on the Orient Express, a lot of people had been complicit in arranging Sarah’s 50th celebrations in the full knowledge that Sarah might beast us extra hard the next week, but we wanted to do something to show our appreciation for all our trainer does.

Next up for the big five-o is our Social Sec, Alex. Don’t worry Alex, we’ve already got your red mankini on order! It will hang nicely next to your blue and purple ones!

13 Goodgymers (and one phantom runner) hit the street, ran 2k and made good headway on the task at Bruce Grove Youth Centre

Shouts out to Helen and Naz who made it down to their first GoodGym session… your help was much appreciated guys! Give them a cheer folks.

The Task

This week we were heading over to Bruce Grove Youth Centre the task was to refresh the centres careers office which has seen lots of use especially after the local prospectus office closing down some years ago. The walls of the office were in need of some GGH TLC so we did what we do and got our paint on.

a little flakey

After a quick briefing we were off on a 1k run to the task location at Bruce Grove. On arrival Akin the task owner and manager of the centre greeted us at the entrance before giving us a little intro. He then lead us to the office we’d be decoration. The room isn’t huge and the floor space was limited but it was a snug fit for all of us and this only seemed to add to the good vibes and banter that ensued.. along with a fair bit of graft too, mind. The teams split into little groups with some getting paint, brushes and all we’d be using unpacked and ready to go while others used filler to err fill the walls which had become a little flakey / chipped.. along with others getting rid of blu tack left on the walls and spreading dust sheets.. people wasted no time in getting started with this and everyone was super enthusiastic. We managed to get lots done before having to clear up. We’ll be returning next week to get more done.

The Fitness session

Before the fitness session could commence everyone pilled onto the football table for a quick match of everyone’s favourite youth centre game. A few people had clearly spied the table on the way in and there was no way they were leaving without a quick whack. This week we chose to do our fitness session in the hall at the centre and the human beep test was on the cards.. this went down well considering most had not done this for many years.. school years to be precise. Everyone did a really good job in staying within the beeps but hats off to the girls who took it to the next level.. an International Women’s Day win for the ladies.. nice! After a quick breather and a round of high fives we were off into the night again. With a sprint along the home straight (Louise has clearly been working on her sprints – well done!) and a quick warm down we were done for another evening of goodness but not before mentioning Paul’s playlist which we had been listening to on the little boombox.. his playlist contained some pretty cool floor fillers and of course some Chaz and Dave.

Great session but I'm left wondering what happened to our phantom runner.. 🤔

Oh and thanks to FRP for the paint 👊🏽

Sign Up For Future Sessions Below!

Sign up for our next Wednesday nights group run & task Here, and join us at Chicken Town afterwards for a bite to eat.

We also have a task and mission this weekend check them out here Saturday and one Sunday

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Until next time folks - do good, stay fit & look out for the light