Hill Sprint Coach Celine provided running focus as we ran up the park, multiple times, in the dark :)

We finished off our training session with a good old litter pick in the local area.

Here's to more training and tasks to help Sheffield this January :)

SAYiT are a local charity for LGBTQ+ young people. They were in the process of moving to a larger offices to be able to continue and expand their work. That's where GoodGym comes in!

We welcomed new member Mikey to join us to help loading furniture and boxes onto the van and assisting with unloading at the other end.

We met some lovely members of staff and volunteers for the charity and they were very grateful for our help!

This evening we were off to assist the Pitsmoor Pickers with their litterpicking activities. We gathered outside the Showroom cinema as usual, had a pre-run briefing and did a role call. The run took us through Castlegate and along some pleasant traffic-free paths by the riverside. Upon arrival at the litterpicking location a few of the Pitsmoor Pickers were already busy wombling away. Both GG and our contact from the pickers, Karen, were expecting fewer participants tonight so when 7 GoodGym runners and 4 Pitsmoor Pickers rocked up at Rock St we were a little short on litterpickers for the litterpickers. Happily, Karen’s car was parked just up the road and she had some spare ones… phew!

With everyone pickered and bagged up we were tasked with clearing away the rubbish up Rock Street and adjacent roads. We split up into ones and twos, then hit the road(s). We worked our way up the hill to the top of the road where there was already a substantial pile of rubbish waiting to be added to. After around 45 minutes of picking we had transformed the area, leaving it spick and span, Pitsmoor or less!

Some group pictures with our bagged up booty were snapped, we said our thankyous and goodbyes, then set off a little way down the street to do some scenic squatting. There was a wall by the roadside with stunning views of the city; this was the perfect place to partake in some wall-sitting. Everyone took up a position on the wall-with-a-view and prepared for 1 minute of wall-sit action. “Everyone” easily achieved this, and even a few unplanned extra seconds!

After this fun we ran back down the hill and through town to the grass outside the Showroom, doing sporadic squats at stops on the way as usual. Here we fully stretched off the main muscles used in the evening’s activities and heard some announcements, namely the weekly Barnsley GoodGym session on Wednesday.

A leafleting task on a bank holiday, who'll turn up for this?! Well, quite a few dedicated folk apparently. This week we were delivering leaflets for Roundabout, a local youth housing charity. They're having a chocfest (https://www.yorkshirechocolatefestival.com/) to raise funds in the autumn and are trying to spread the word around Sheffield. For this they needed GoodGym's collective helping hands!

We had 5 mapped routes provided to us to follow. Upon close inspection of these routes it was collectively decided that it would be best for us to split up into two teams working on just one of the circular planned routes, working in tandem. This decision was taken because a lot of the proposed routes didn't cover very many residential areas, the land being instead occupied by commercial premises. The chosen route would take all of us about an hour to complete. Perfecto!

En route we found, as usual for many Sheffield houses, that many didn't have letterboxes on their front doors, requiring people to walk down alleyways to back doors. We encountered several barking dogs, foreboding alleyways, interesting curious notices and friendly residents on our group paper-round.

Upon completing our route, we regrouped and set off back down the hill to the amphitheater for extra fitness. This was a last minute, from the top of my head, addition as I foresaw our leafleting taking up all of our time. We used the large steps to complete reps of 10 box jumps (or step-ups), 10 push-ups and 10 tricep dips, before running the short distance back through the station to the Showroom. Here we stretched off, did announcements and popped inside for refreshments or popped off.

We felt like we'd helped, in a roundabout way!

10 GGers braved the weather to help Courageous Karen and the Pitsmoor Pickers clean up the Burngreave area of Sheffield, picking up litter and the occasional toy arm (not sure what happened to the rest of it).

We set off from the Showroom following a quick 4-way lunge warm up to get us ready for the bending needed for litter picking. Litter picked for 45 mins then dumped our bags at the top of the hill ready for collection.

Karen thought we needed more exercise though, so we got in a hill sprint back up to collect the bags and drop them down at the main bag collection point, ready for the council pick up.

It started to rain on the way back, but that didn't stop us with a final Howard Street hill sprint (taking care not to slip on the slippery stones), before a bus stop stretch off.

Hands down it was a successful mission.