24 GoodGymers ran 7km to help The Church of St Michael and St George, White City

January and the January Challenge are over, but this didn't stop 23 wonderful GoodGymers from joining me to lend a hand at a BRAND NEW TASK tonight! The evening was decidedly mild for February and many decided to get their legs out and rock the shorts 🩳.

For some reason, here at GoodGym H&F we often seem to have runners with the same name, which both helps and hinders with remembering names and nicknames! - the official term is 'homonymous'.

There was no excuse to forget one name tonight...a big welcome along to Beth who joined us tonight for her first GoodGym H&F group run.

News, news, news

1. January Challenge 2020: H&F's final totals...a whopping 160 good deeds completed and 1897km run. 16th place in the 'Gold' League. Smashed it! Well done team 🙌.

2. Upcoming events: Sat 8th Feb at 10am - Richmond Park 5km & 10km and Sun 9th Feb at 9.30am - Wimbledon's Second Sunday Five.

3. Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sun 17th May: you'll have a great day out cheering on fellow runners and earn yourself some nice freebies, these include a free entry to a future race and a t-shirt! For all the details, click here.

AND FINALLY....

1. Team Nash are running the London Marathon for the brilliant charity, Barnardo's who do fantastic work to protect and support vulnerable children and young people. Please click here to sponsor them.

Team Nash ran with Daley Thompson at the weekend and is also a fan of my favourite brain and body warm-up which involves different moves for each number...I learnt from the best, we always hang out at weekends 😉

Pray it by ear

Tonight's brand new task was at The Church of St Michael and St George, White City, a nice long run to get our legs turning. Following a quick-warm up which included high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and lunges. Heart rates raised we set off towards White City. All the traffic lights seemed against us, but they handily enabled us to regroup. With lots of pedestrian dodging inside and around Shepherds Bush Green we happily headed onto Wood Lane which was far clearer and wider.

There was also a perfectly placed long wall which allowed for the weekly wall sit to be completed - hooray!

"I know where we're going. It's a left, then a right at QPR's stadium and up" - Tom

With Tom sounding very assured of where we were heading he took the lead. Katie and Andrew had timed their 'running lates' to perfection and met us as we headed up towards the church.

The state of pray

Church located we headed inside through the side entrance and were greeted by the vicar, Ben. Ben welcomed everyone in and explained all the jobs that needed doing tonight:

• Clean the kitchen area
• Clean both sets of toilets
• Clean in the vestibules
• Tidy the crèche area
• Clean all the windows
• Polish the brass plaques
• A garden litter-pick
• Hoover - lots of it with trusty Henry!

The team split into lots of smaller groups to tackle the list of jobs.

Like two pees in a pod

Katie and Catriona did their best Kim and Aggy impression in the toilets and left them sparkling clean!

So crèche & clean

In the crèche area, there was lots of tidying of stuffed animals, books and toys, and cleaning of the windows by Eloise, Sarah, Sophie and Milla.

Alice become very well acquited with Henry as she set to work hoovering the carpets and around the chairs, finding Zanoubia's locker key in the process - a fab find! Analiese was on polishing duty, putting the Brasso to work on the brass plaque so that it would be lovely and shiny again.

Matt stepped up to tackle the window cleaning on the large windows in the hall, with Andrew kindly holding the ladder to provide rock solid support.

Also in the hall area, Zanoubia cleaned all the fingerprints from the doors, while Lucy hoovered, Chi tidied and Biscuits cleaned in the other toilets...there definitely wasn't any childish behaviour involving hoovers here....

Mary, Luis and Beth set to work cleaning the kitchen area, with Luis ensuring the basin was the cleanest one you'd ever set eyes upon! Mary and Beth also ensured all the plants in the church had their thirst quinched with a good watering.

A litter pick of this, and a litter pick of that

While the others were hard at work inside, 'team bags' - Cookie, Helen, Marissa, Tom and Maddie (sorry for the name team!) - were working hard outside to clear-up all the litter and a bit of a "Brucie Bonus", a quick weed in the garden area....how to pray your cards right!

No altaring this photo!

Amazingly, in just half an hour all the jobs were completed! All that was left to do was to pose for Chi as he took this week's team photo. Boom! Task complete.

We said our goodbyes and thankyous to Ben and headed outside. Despite it feeling that no one was heading back to base with me when asked who was heading or peeling off on the way, many of the group ran the quicker and more direct 3km run back. Here we were treated to a stretch off led by Tom, in the words of Mo, "that's lovely that!".

Thank you all for coming along and for all your terrific efforts tonight team. Have a great rest of your week! Sign up for next week's run here. Don't forget it's the monthly social following the run!

Shoutouts 📣

• Thank you to Matt for tonight's pun, Chi for his photography skills, Helen for backmarking and to Tom for leading the cool down!
• Well done to those who did the wonderfully muddy 'Splash & Dash' on Wimbledon Common and the Regents Park 10km!
• Good luck to those parkrunning and racing this weekend.

23 GoodGymers did some school running as they went back to school to lend a hand at John Betts Primary

It was a deceptively chilly night but this didn't stop 22 warm and hardy souls from joining me tonight to help out with a whole heap of jobs in Eloise's school, John Betts Primary.

Tonight we welcomed along, Mary, Venny, Sophie and Dan to their first H&F group run, thank you all for coming along and lending some extra hands tonight, hope you enjoyed it! 🙌

With everyone layered up and eager to get started we headed outside to our lovely and 'glamorous' cordoned off car park spot for the intros and news round-up...

Ain't it school news

1. January Challenge 2020 - we're into the last few days! We've completed 157 good deeds and run/walked 1,725kms, which smashes our 2019 totals of 107 good deeds and 1,627 kms. Check out the GoodGym leagues here.

2. Upcoming races - there's some great upcoming events that other H&F GoodGym'ers are getting involved with: Sunday 2nd February at 9.30am - Wimbledon Common 'Dash for the Splash' 10km and Saturday 8th February at 10am - Richmond Park 5km & 10km.

3. Cheer everyone! - there's a new '📢 Cheer all' button that enables you to cheer everyone who attended the session...although in a slight 'faux pas' tech error, it appears that you'll also give yourself a cheer too 😳.

4. 'Humans of H&F Exhibition' - a wonderful exhibition presented by United in Hammersmith & Fulham, on at the Lyric Theatre until 22nd February. Our very own H&F GoodGymer, Katie (K-A-T-H-R-Y-N 😉) Hodges is one of those 'humans' featured, see if you can spot her!

And....a big WELL DONE to Eloise who achieved TWO PBs at the weekend, one at parkrun and one at the Farnborough Half! 🥳🙌🏅

As a school of thumb

Following a pulse raising warm-up which involved some high knees, lunges, fast feet and a favourite of mine at the moment, the 'number exercise' challenge (great for warming-up both the body and brain!), we set off to John Betts Primary School with Cookie kindly backmarking, to ensure no one was lost en route.

Having successfully navigated our way around pedestrians and the streets of Hammersmith, we paused briefly to allow everyone to regroup, and much to everyone's delight had enough time to fit in a quick wall sit. Despite being a real 'quad burner' 🦵🔥, this exercise is great for runners as it not only builds isometric strength and endurance in the quadriceps muscle group, glutes, and calves, but also prevents runner's knee. I promise I don't torture you every week without good reason 😄!

Wall sit completed we continued on our run. It wasn't long before we all arrived at the front gates of the school and entered through the large main...well all aside from Cookie, who I may have forgotten to inform which door it was we had all disappeared through 🙈. The team were greeted in the main school hall by the school caretaker, Matt and his daughter, Emily. Matt explained that like many schools, due to constant funding cuts, any money available to schools goes directly into education rather than into general school maintenance and upkeep, so was very appreciative for all the helping hands tonight.

"Thank you, you lovely mad crazy people" - Matt

School's paradise

Matt and Eloise had drawn up a long list of jobs for the team to get stuck into, these included:

• Moving 10kgs of bagged wood chips to the climbing area 💪
• Sorting and labelling of school uniform for the PTA 📋🏷️
• Moving books from one room to another 📚 - with the bonus of stairs workout in-between!
• Moving two filing cabinets 🗄️🗄️ - again, with the bonus of stairs!
• Sorting the top-floor storage room 🗃

There was lots to keep the team busy tonight!

The team split into three groups to tackle the list of jobs. One group headed back outside to the climbing area with Matt, the second group headed up the stairs with Eloise and the third group stayed in the main hall. Within minutes, their were red and black GoodGym shirt both inside and out, and a real hive of activity.

Friends with benechips

Bev, Alice, Speedy, Andrew, Dan, Sophie R, Matt, Annabel, Milla and Cookie all got stuck in to the upper-body workout of wood chip shifting and mulching. Matt gave the first large bags of wood chips a helping hand over to make it easier and quicker for the group to scoop and distribute the wood chips to the 'danger' areas of the climbing area - the areas that needed more wood chips in order to be as 'fall-proof' as possible.

"We're all barking mad" - Bev

Despite the challenge of the cold and darkness, the team worked incredibly hard and efficiently to move the entire 10 kilos of wood chips! Some scooped, some carried and distributed containers full of wood chips, and others spread the piles of wood chips. Boom! One job done!

How much wood could a GoodGymer chip, if a GoodGymer could chip wood?

Book at them go!

Eloise headed up to the library with Marissa, Annabelle, Analiese, Tatty and Sophie C. The group had been tasked with the physical workout of the relocation of many books, where stairs had to be negotiated first up and then down while carrying a finely balanced pile of books. The team completed this with ease and emptied the shelves in super-quick time!

Time to run a file?

Next up was the job of moving two filing cabinets down the stairs. One proved a great deal heavier, thanks to some rather age-old paperwork that was removed then carefully placed back in once the cabinet had been relocated.

Off the cuff

The small but mighty team of Sarah, Lucy, Mary, Venny and Zanoubia set to work sorting crates of school uniform clothing: skirts, shirts, jackets, blouses all into the same age sizes and folded into nicely labelled bags. I jested that by chance, Sarah happened to be involved in the job that had not one but two of her favourites...bags and organising!

Once the wood chip group had completed their job they headed inside to the warmth of the main hall and gave a hand to those sorting and labelling the bags of uniform.

"What do you reckon, do I fit into this jacket?" - Speedy

Check out Alice, Sophie R, Zanoubia and Mary and Venny in the background, focused on sorting and folding!

"I feel like I've had the full GoodGym experience" - Sophie R

The sort end of the stick

Biscuits and Milla were given the challenge of the top-floor storage room which to begin with, which shall we say was a little unorganised. Trays and all kinds of items were everywhere! Milla even discovered a wonderfully crafted internal organ diagram. With some help from Emily, the storage room was now a place you could easily walk into, or in Biscuits' case, take 'Henry' the hoover for a quick spin around.

Check out the transformation!...

After forty minutes of lifting and shifting, organising and moving we called it a night once the final bag of school uniform was bagged up and labelled. There was just one last thing to do...have a team photo in Mrs. Nash's classroom! Much to the delight of many their were some fun coloured building blocks that were made into a lovely 'GG' prop.

With all the jobs completed and a team photo taken we said our goodbyes and thank yous to Matt and Emily, and headed back to base. Sadly, there was no time for a fitness session tonight, but we did manage to get in a few more 'squats' or 'spotty dogs' or as I conjured up 'squatty dogs' (now there's an idea!) on the run back. Once back at base we had a good stretch off back before heading home for warmth and food.

Top work tonight team! 😊

"You've all saved me many hours, if not days of walking back and forth, moving and sorting books which has been on my to do list since September 🙈" - Eloise

Next week we've got a new task up in White City for The Church of St Michael and St George. For all the details and to sign up, click here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!

A few quick words to say: thank you to everyone who came, dressed up, donated to Stephen's House, and partied away. We thought it was brilliant and hope that you agree. Some thank yous:

🎅 to our wonderful DJs Alex and Chi, who did a great job with their alternating sets

🎅 to our amazing hosts Stephen's House, who kept the drinks flowing and were so flexible with every request we had

🎅 to GGB's very own Mumtaz who did SO much work in getting the party from a concept to a reality

🎅 and finally, to our prize winners who made an amazing effort with their costumes: 3rd place was of course Steve in his Elf and Safety outfit (and a whole persona) 2nd was Rosie and her 5 gold rings 1st ~drum roll~ was Beth as a Pig in Blanket!!!

Thanks again. I hope you like the photos and do join us in thanking everyone here when you next see them. Have a brilliant Christmas.

450 leaflets distributed and 6km run by 22 GoodGym'ers? I don't be-leaf it!

On what threatened to be a wet and miserable evening, a lovely mild and dry (thankfully!) evening greeting us in H&F. An amazing 21 GoodGym'ers joined me tonight to run and spread the word about some wonderful local charities.

Baptism of flyer

Tonight it was lovely to welcome along Lauren and Tatjana to their first H&F group run, thank you both for coming along and lending some extra hands tonight, hope you enjoyed it! And thank you as always to my wonderful regulars 😊.

Today’s task was the distribution of leaflets for Open Age UK H&F, posters for Food2You and some postcards for Age UK H&F around the streets of Hammersmith. So what do all these local charities do and provide I hear you ask?...

• Open Age H&F provide hundreds of weekly activities for local residents aged 50+ to sustain their physical and mental fitness, maintain an active lifestyle and develop new and stimulating interests.
• Food2You, a grocery delivery service run by Age UK for vulnerable, isolated older people who can't do their own shopping. It will be up and running in Hammersmith & Fulham very soon and they are currently looking for volunteers to drive the delivery vans and assist with co-ordination.
• Age UK H&F offer services for the over 50s, these range from home cooked meals to physical activity classes to IT classes, led by the man himself, Johnny Wren. Part of the programme Johnny is heading up is getting those in the community more IT literate, and one side of the postcard promoted this service. The other side was a call for more volunteers.

Flyer flyer pants on flyer!

Following a pulse-raising warm-up and a quick-fire number game we set off towards Shepherd’s Bush and White City, weaving in and around pedestrians and puddles (some were more successful than others at the latter!) and regrouped at Shepherd's Bush Green.

Before continuing on, we smashed out tonight’s fitness session of “When I went to GoodGym H&F...”. This was based on the school game, except with exercises. Everyone was challenged to both remember and do all the previous exercises, and add in an additional exercise and repetition.

We called it a day when we reached Sarah at number 14 and had the following list: 1 squat, 2 twists, 3 lunges, 4 knee raises, 5 jumping jacks, 6 jumps, 7 ‘funky chickens’, 8 punches, 9 left-leg hops, 10 right-leg hops, 11 spotty dogs, 12 star jumps, 13 press-ups and 14 windmills. Cake and biscuits was also mentioned, but sadly today no-where to be seen (until next week...).

Which, by my calculations worked out as a grand total of: 14 squats, 26 twists, 36 lunges, 44 knee raises, 50 jumping jacks, 54 jumps, 56 ‘funky chickens’, 56 punches, 54 left-leg hops, 50 right-leg hops, 44 spotty dogs, 36 star jumps, 26 press-ups and 14 windmills. Phew! Great work team, 14 exercises and a whopping 560 repetitions done in total 🙌🏼. There was also the bonus of “We went to GoodGym H&F and got some ‘motivational’ heckles from some kids on bikes!” 🗣🚲 as captured and captioned by Lucy on the ‘gram! @goodgym_hf for those not yet following.

Make like a tree...and leaf-let

Fitness completed we continued on our run. We reached Shepherd’s Bush Road and headed down one of the adjoining side streets. The team split into two and implemented the efficient 'flyer chain' down all the streets with perfection. With some helpful local knowledge from Lauren about a cut-through the large pile of leaflet quickly began to diminish and after 40 minutes of leafleting door-to-door the team had covered a substantial amount of the surrounding side streets.

Realising that we had yet to get a team photo with our leaflets, in a case of déjà vu from last week we headed towards the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. Once outside we inspected the level of leaf fall over the past week and grouped together for some team photos, and under direction from team photographer, Mo, we struck a fabulous ‘flexed’ pose 💪🏼. In the words of Mo, “that’s lovely that!”

Time flyers when you're having fun!

With time flying (as it always does!) we began our run back to base armed with one Food2You poster each. The challenge was to get the poster displayed in a shop, supermarket or local convenience store. In a classic case of speaking too soon about it being an early Christmas miracle that no-one had been lost, as we reached Shepherd's Bush Green again we realised that we were 3 GoodGym'ers short! Thankfully the yellow viz of Johnny was soon spotted running with Rosie and Tatty!

With a handful of Food2You posters successfully delivered and displayed, and most importantly, everyone present and correct, we all headed off on our short run back to base for a stretch off and then back home. Another good deed done! Thank you for all your hard work and efforts tonight team...560 exercise repetitions and around 450 leaflets delivered, boom!

Shoutouts 📣

• A big well done to Matt who got not one but TWO PBs at the weekend!! 🥳🙌🏼.
• Well done to Alice and 'Speedy Jonzales', Jonny Knight for completing the Spartan Stadion Race at Twickenham! 🙌
• Thank you to all my backmarkers, and to Mo for his fantastic camera work as always 📸.
  

News 📰

1. H&F Community Mission - Age UK H&F's Christmas party is on Thursday 12th December. Please sign up here if you can lend a hand anytime between 4pm-8.30pm.
2. Other local Community Missions - Tree planting in Chiswick on Saturday 30th November, all the details are here.
3. Santa Dash 🎅- Sunday 8th December at Brockwell Park. Run a 5k or 10k dressed as Santa! All the details are here - Andrew has kindly created a team called 'GoodGym H&F'.
4. GG-all areas Christmas party 🎅🎄⛄🎉 - Friday 6th December. Places are limited so make sure you sign up! All the details are here.

Next week, we’ll be spreading some Christmas cheer as we will be delivering some Christmas Cards for H&F Foodbank around Fulham. Please sign up here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!