What a night in Hounslow. Not only are we growing (hurrah, more of you to run with), but we had our first social thanks to the lovely Waterman's Art Centre who gave us some tickets after we did some tasks for them, and the lovely Jo, who organised it. Thanks both! Welcome to the group Rafal and Gosia and welcome back Giacomo!

After some chocolate biscuits and a chat about our racing weeks, we made our way outside to warm up. During some dynamic exercises which tested our reflexes both mental and physical, we discussed what we would send to room 101, never to be seen again. From moths, wasps and spiders, to large umbrellas, buggies, drizzle, and overcrowding, it was perhaps Adam who summed it up for all of us, when he said he would banish foolishness. Excellent idea.

In a decidedly unfoolish fashion, we set off for our task tonight at Strand on the Green primary school.It was a very nippy run down because we only had to go a short distance, so in no time at all we arrived at the school and were faced with electric gates and the code we had been given. In what was like an episode of the Crystal Maze, we got the code right, and as the gates creaked open we found a pile of tools and gloves waiting for us. Our job tonight was to clear a very overgrown conservation area and tidy up a lot of clippings, moving the whole lot to the compost heap across the field. Wasting no time, we hopped to it, accompanied by some tunes to keep us motivated.

Back and forth went the trailer carrying pile after pile of weeds and branches, Remy's secateurs were given the test of their life, and Jo found the world's largest slug. Before long the areas were looking much clearer and tidier - check out the before and after photos (and thanks for the reminders, team!).

With the school field to ourselves we decided to take advantage and do our fitness session there. After a few rounds of games including Clusters, British Bulldog and knee fencing, we set off on our first sprint around the playground. But where did Adam go? Then we smashed out some strengthening drills including squat holds and planks, before attempting to beat our times on the sprint the second time around. There was some excellent running from the gang, who all beat their first times.

While the advance party set off for Waterman's, the rest of us took a speedy run back to the starting point and finished off the night with some stretches, before some of us took ourselves off for Hounslow's first social. Same again soon please!

A great night of doing some real good and getting some proper fit! Way to go, Hounslow, you are all fantastic. Sign up [here[ (https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/friends-of-cathja) to take the slow out of Hounslow. Or something.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Last night in Hounslow we were the (slightly sweaty) stars of the silver screen as the council had come along to make a little film about being active in the borough.

But before we could learn our lines and hit make up, we had our usual hellos and well dones. Hat tip to all that did park runs this week - way to go Matthew and David - and to Andy who is topping both the distance and good deed leagues. Have a look at the heroes boards to see where you are. But now Natasha has stopped her Strava flat lining who knows what will happen in the rankings!

After a quick warm up and some Chariots of Fire style shots of the group running, wind in our hair, past our starting point at the Town Hall, we set off on the 1.5 mile run to Waterman's Arts Centre. Dave took us on a lovely route under Kew Bridge and along the tow path. We must have looked quite the team with every single one of us in our red GG tshirts. Lovely stuff! Before long we made it to the centre - Waterman's is an amazing independent charity where all the money made is ploughed back into the organisation to allow the whole community access to arts, bringing them together through cultural participation.

We cracked straight on with our task, which was to weed the outside pathways which had become overgrown. We were given gloves and a range of tools including one which we could not work out - please see picture and if anybody can shed any light on it then let us know! There were also snails, lots of snails, which Remy and Natasha rescued.

Within half an hour the pathway was looking lovely and clear of weeds, so we set off back to the park to do a quick round of upper body, legs and core workouts. It was a speedy run back - well done team. We started with the arms - three rounds of tricep dips, wide arm press ups, and diamond press ups before moving on to legs, which involved doing lunges, mountain climbers (argh) and then a squat hold. We had a little break as a lovely person came over and asked what we were doing - we must have been a great advert for GoodGym! Then we finished off with a third round of core exercises featuring, of course, planks.

Next week we are off to help out Roger and the homeless shelter he runs at Ealing Road Baptist Church, which you can sign up to here which is going to be followed by a super special first ever Hounslow GG SOCIAL! I know. There are more details on the Hounslow GG facebook page or email me. Can't wait to see you there!

A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!

Hump day in Hounslow is the best ever. Don't believe me? Have a read at what the dream team got up to last night...

We met at a hot hot hot Chiswick Town Hall, ready to do some serious good. But first we had some high fives to hand out. A huge well done to the lovely Jennifer who ran Gunnersbury Park Run for the first time and smashed it, and also to Andy who just ran double the furthest distance he'd every run before in one go with his Dad, who was celebrating 20 years of running. Fantastic job, and in Jennifer's words, that's proper 'runspiration'! We also welcomed back Marco from Islington, no Camden, no Islington.

While we did a little bit of warming up, which included some fancy fast footwork, we chatted about our favourite sandwich fillings. If, dear reader, you're interested, in Hounslow we like; tuna, halloumi and avocado (posh), egg (good protein), smoked salmon (posh), chicken and cheese. Who's getting hungry?

It was a nice 1.7 mile run down to Ealing Baptist Church, which we haven't been to in ages. Well done to everybody for doing it without stopping (aside from a short pause at the worst roundabout in the world). Roger was waiting for us, and there were some distractingly delicious smells emanating from the kitchen....

After a quick glass of water we were taken upstairs to get cracking on our task. The first job was to move a huge pile of bags from one room to another. The bags were full of donated clothes - our task was to sort them out into women, men, kids and, um, miscellaneous, before putting them into nice strong bags ready to be given to the homeless. Even with some small pauses - 'is this small man, or large child?' we got the job done quicksharp, filling all the large bags that Roger had bought.

We were just about to set back off for our run back when Roger came out of the kitchen with six lots of dinner for us all. What a legend! Best task ever.

Our run back was all the quicker, knowing we were carrying our supper with us, and with Andy and Marco doing some extra speed work, we arrived at the Town Hall ready for some stretches in no time. Thanks to the older gent on the bicycle who rode past as we were stretching against the Town Hall pillars shouting 'I tried that yesterday, they wouldn't budge!'. There's always one :)

Following on from Ella's Chiswick Chuckler a couple of weeks ago, we had this rib-tickler from Jennifer this week: two drums and a cymbal fell off a cliff. Ba-dum, tish!

So, I think you'll agree that hump day is the best day in Hounslow - getting fit, making a difference, free dinner, and even a joke or two thrown in! For more of the same, sign up for next week here

Hey, spring! Where did you go? It's very rude to lure us in with your pretty sun and warm weather, only to whip it away again so we have to start our runs in the cold and damp. Still, it didn't put off five runners ready to get fit and do good in Hounslow, for we are GoodGym.

We had a lovely new runner, Barry join us for the first time last night. Barry, like a total legend, has recently given up smoking, so he deserves a double cheer. Go on, GoodGym, do the double click! We also said a big well done to Andy, Toni and Dave who are all topping the Hounslow leader boards. Great work.

After a chat about the upcoming missions this weekend ( if you fancy it you can sign up here)we did a few quick stretches, and found out where everybody's favourite place in the world is - answers ranged from Spain, Tenerife, and Rome to anywhere by the sea. Lovely stuff!

It was a good two mile run to the task this week, so we set off on a nice route that meandered by the river. After no time at all we arrived at the Friends of Cathja shop in Brentford, an amazing charity that supports local people with enduring health problems. The warehouse is full to the brim with every kind of donation you could imagine, but our job this week was to sort out a towering pile of books into manageable boxes. While testing our spatial awareness we had great fun flinging bags of things over the donation mountain. We came across every book, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar (remember that?) to The Bible in Spanish, and before long we had amassed a huge pile of boxes full of books ready to sell.

We all (sort of) agreed the run back felt much shorter, maybe because we were discussing what was for dinner. While Alannah and Barry debated the merits (or not) of KFC, Andy made us feel tired as he did a couple of tough loops of hard running, and we even managed to find out a bit about the amazing history of this corner of Hounslow. A jam packed run back! After a few stretches, our Wednesday run drew to a close. But it was not without making a difference to our local community, plus getting a good long run in. Well done team! Next week we're off to help the homeless at Ealing Baptist Church, you can sign up here (and I hope you do!):

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/a-helping-hand-for-the-homeless

24 wonderful runners ran 5K to revitalise the railings at the Ballast Quay Garden!

It was a beautiful evening over in Greenwich (although still a bit cold for my liking). We welcomed the lovely Nina to the gang and saw a comeback from the speedy Simon who ran with us last summer! Good to have you back Si! Finally we saw the return of everyone's favourite threesome (or trio should I say), Steve who has just finished his exams, Christian who has finally recovered from that nasty cleaning injury and Alex who managed to roll out of work on time despite being in an ice cream coma. And Laura was back for more after her first run last week. GREAT TO HAVE YOU BACK GUYS :)

The favourite part of your day!

Favourite thing this week required a little more thought than normal but it was nice to hear snippets of everyone's day!! We had people playing with new cafetieres, eating pecan slices, drinking champagne at work, walking in the park, sleeping in the park (although not whilst walking Linda), leaving work on time, eating Lindt bunnies and copious amounts of ice cream. LOVELY!

Cone flipz!

We did a little warm up in the form of the cone flip game. We split into two teams - one team flipped the cones the right way up and the other half flipped them the wrong way up then we counted to see how many of each there were at the end! This one really gets your heart going as you're constantly going up and down and running around! Mike and Katie were on opposite teams but Mike was hot on her tails flipping over everything she did, undoing all her hard work! No boyfriend points for you Mike! After a few minutes we were good to go.

Since the garden was only a few minutes away, we decided to run the time trial loop that we would be doing in the fitness session so everyone knew roughly where they would be going! Ben P led the way in his little GG race vest (you can join the GG race team here!) and 1km later we were back where we started. A little group photo (the first of many of the evening, sorry it was just too nice not to) and then we set off for Ballast Quay to meet the amazing and super lovely Diane!

We came here last summer to shift some bricks on the shore and this time it was some railings that needed a bit of love. We split into two groups so Ben C took group 1 away for a little jog along the river whilst the others got sanding! Fence dust was flying everywhere and people's faces began to look like the chimney sweepers in Mary Poppins so at least we knew the sandpaper was working! A few wipes with the white spirit and it was ready for the paint!

By this point, group one returned and we switched over. Alex took the other group for a little run whilst the others got stuck in with the painting! Steve was using all of his manipulative skills to try and coax a swap with Clare for her larger brush. "This small brush is really good, you can get all the corners" but Clare was having none of it. George and Christian got more paint on each other than they did the fence but their input was still appreciated. 15 minutes later and the fence was looking BEAUTIFUL. Plus the sunset in the background made it even better. Another group photo and we said our goodbyes to Diane. Hopefully we will be back in the next few weeks to do the other side! STAND BY!

GoodGym Greenwich TT Strava Segment!

We ran back for the fitness session which was a fast version of the run we did earlier that evening. So the idea is we will do it once a month to see how everyone is improving! I think people were a little nervous but I hope everyone understood it was not a race against each other but more a race against your future self :) So stopwatch at the ready, Ben P gave a brief briefing (a short briefing not a briefing about briefs) just to clarify the route and BOOM, away they went!!!!!! Just a few short minutes later and the leaders were coming into the finishing straight. Some really speedy running from EVERYONE! I was blown away, especially with all the corners you had to go around! I hope you all remembered your times. Write it down so you don't forget for next time. We have the official Strava segment leaderboard here which Simon and Amy are currently top of! Congrats! Also massive well done to Linda who pushed super hard and got an amazing time! So chuffed for you!

A little stretch and some Percy piglets and we were done :)

Finally here are a few handy links: Here is a link to the Victoria Park 10K that a few of us were talking about last night if anyone fancies it! It should be relatively flat and fast! Here is a link to our GG Greenwich Facebook group, please join and get involved! Here is a link to the big monthly social which is tonight!

Massive well done last night everyone! Thanks for putting all your effort into the task and the TT. It was awesome and hope you had a great time! Oh and huge good luck to Ben and Brin running Brighton marathon this weekend!