An lovely evening to head again back to Livingstone Primary School in Parkstone!

Once again, Kirsty, a Goodgym runner, and also head of Early Years at Livingstone was all ready for us! This time she had also enlisted her TA's - Andrea, Tracey and Lara - to come and help get some more of the tasks done. It is amazing as volunteers we can go in and help, but when we are joined by those that actually use these resources, it really makes it more special for everyone! Andrea, Tracey and Lara did a great job transforming the stage area with blackboard paint ready for curtains and props!

It was FAB-U-LOUS to have the new faces of Hannah and Maria join us tonight and they were straight onto it with a paintbrush and a natter! Hannah also joined us after for a run and was the only person to complete the final hill repeat back up again and even ran past her car to do the final stretch with us! We hope to have you along soon again to get to know you a bit and join our happy world at Goodgym!

Sean as a last minute entry, joined us from the dark side (shout out to the GoodGym Bournemouth Massive :)) - Great to have your extra pair of hands and joining our often tedious linked conversation!

It was all hands on the deck (or paintbrushes) tonight and covering up those tired coloured panels - We completed the fence and managed to go over some of the panels for a second time to smarten them up!

Sue and Alun had Deju vu after tackling that same bit of tall fence panel but smashed it between them! Shelley and Elizabeth were on site - apparently moving a shed but the photos only show they founds some toys to play with so who knows what really happened (Well done Ladies!) We welcomed back Tim and Marie tonight - Both not seen since lockdown but it was lovely to have them both back on the team! We hope this will be start of seeing your faces more often! Christine once again completed a run to task and back again and Patricia also had the take the hill back to her car after doing some hills so well done ladies!

The short hill session after took in the local area - What a place to train! We got to go up, then down, then up again, and down...you get the picture! It was 1.5 miles of fun for all (well nearly all - right!). So Kudos to Hannah, Robert (as ever busting up those hills!), Shelley, Elizabeth, Patricia, Tim and Marie for joining the lung busting loop!

Have a great week all!

This week we returned to Livingstone Infant School and to a teacher who has also been a Goodgym Runner!

Kirsty met us at the task (cycled down - Kudos) to give us the directions - The task was to paint a colourful but tired looking fence. We had grey paint and lots of keen members and so we were off!

Alun joined us for the first time with his wife, Sue. They walked down and walked back so great to get the exercise in! We really hope to see you next week and in future at tasks - Either walking there or part drive / part walk!

Christine did a 1.5 mile run in and then back again so took the opportunity to enjoy the hills of parkstone!

After we had been at the task for 45 mins, we decided to finish one side and complete the section on the other, we will be returning next week and hope we can bring more Goodgym people to complete the task and also move some items around the playground.

Great to all have a good natter as we painted, something that we all missed in Lockdown - Having real good conversations with people - Be it about running or our own lifes.

Patricia, Esther, Elizabeth and Robert headed off to a local rec ground for a couple of short intervals. Elizabeth showing that she is the queen of speed and leaving the rest of us behind within a matter of feet! We ran together around the area, leaving Pat near her car and then Liz before heading home. Sadly already in the dark! Jane also managed to fit a bit of running in so a full team effort of activity for tonight!

We will be back next week - Paint brushes ready (and in my case - full overalls too I think!) ready for more social distancing painting!

Another week has raced by and before you know it we are all stood there once again in The Sloop in our Goodgym T-Shirts!

Spring is definitely on its way as we actually all arrived with some daylight still with us - in hopefulness we set off down the park to hope we could do some warm up and runs there but by 6.30pm it was back to darkness and street lights.

It was great to welcome Sue tonight - Sue has been part of the running community for many years as a volunteer, leader and runner and is currently getting back to a bit of running. Sue came tonight as it was advertised as a walk option so great we can have you! We will continue as Poole Goodgym to advertise if there is a walking option available (depending on task location) and hope we can appeal to more people to join this group who can head to the task as a walk option directly.

We headed over to the Park in the hope of circuits around the cricket pitch but there were rumours of a big, deep puddle and not enough light to see around it so we took a little run through the park, using lampposts as speed increases as we went.

Back onto the roads and only a short run to the local school that is bright and airy inside. Ocean Academy is a relatively new school and a new place for us all to go.

We were met by Nikki, a TA from the school who had contacted us a number of weeks ago having seen our library move around at St Mary's. The instructions were pretty simple, shelves of books to be put into sections as set out already by Nikki (Animals, Science, Arts and Crafts and so on!). These books are then to be placed in different shelves opposite. Meanwhile those shelves had a bunch of fiction books to move off and onto the old shelves but keeping the alphabetical order (Got that?!). It was into 2 groups of 5 and the move started. For the first 15 minutes there was many questions of 'which section for the book on the queen' and 'is this animal section or a science book' and so on. Fortunately Nikki knew what she wanted and the books were piled high in the just about correct sections! There was a few Laurel and Hardy moments where Goodgym T-Shirts were going around in circles with piles of A quick wipe of the shelves and it a time to fill them up again.

Sue and Tim we appropriately stuck on the 'S' and 'T' authors in the corner whilst Nicola and Jane worked on the 'W' clan! Nicola was last seen walking around asking what section the Queen reference book went into...who knows where both Nikki and Queen ended up! Andrew meanwhile was last seen with a skeleton feeling unwell - not as unwell as the skeleton we hope!

Suddenly the task came together and it was all finished and all books away! Time for a few pics and onto the Constitution Hill. Nikki thanked us all as a group for the work as it has saved her many hours sorting through the books and using her time for this so great to make a difference to a local school!
I am delighted to say it was a lovely hill to run up! I will remember that one in the future - some lovely little ups in it! What goes up must come down and so it was down North Road back to the Sloop all before 8pm so time for a stretch!

Well done to Sarah who still ran the long way around with us back to the Sloop before heading back out again towards home despite not running for a few weeks.

Robert had last night joined the new group Run, Talk, Run that is set up to support mental health, encouraging runners to talk and keep fit. We really support this at Goodgym so we wish the group well and hope many of the runners will also consider coming to Goodgym in the future.

Next week we look forward to a change of task with our first hosting of a social!