Welcome 18 Hardcore heroes were out in force tonight (despite the cold and the rain) to help Santa on his rounds in Crewe collecting money for 40 local charities. It was great to have Alex from GoodGym Central with us tonight. How brave (or possibly slightly mad!) were you in your shorts!! Go Alex!! It was great to welcome Sasha back for her second task. We hope you had a great night!

Kudos A huge well done to everyone who took part in the Nantwich Santa Dash last weekend. I’m sure you all looked fabulous in your Santa outfits. And huge kudos to each of you for coming out in the grotty weather so close to Christmas to do good in the community. You’re all superstars!!

The Main Event It was fabulous to see so many people tonight at GoodGym and lovely to see the festive attire, hats and sparkle! You really were a sight to beho-ho-hold!

Tonight’s task was joining Santa on his rounds as we went door to door collecting money for lots of local charities. We did our warm-up on the extremely festive square to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’. We basically had a bit of a festive boogie (with some sensational dance moves going on, it has to be said!!). We then ran across town to meet Santa on his rounds wishing everyone we passed a Merry Christmas. We had some lovely smiley responses, some reciprocated good wishes and lots of tooting horns!

Santa was delighted to see so many of us rock up to help. We all donned our high-viz and set out with our collection tubs on our mission to raise as much money as possible. The weather didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits and we happily went from door to door with Christmas music filling the streets while Santa followed us on his float stood up his chimney.

The spirit of Christmas and community was all around as we collected. Lovely people at the doors, children with wide eyes waiting in anticipation for Santa to pass by and a group of volunteers out in the cold and the rain giving up their time for local causes. If this couldn’t get you in the festive spirit, nothing could!

Time passed too quickly, and it was soon time to head back. We returned to the square and as we ran back, it was great to hear some lovely comments. Amanda said she’d never felt so Christmassy and Phil said it had really put him in the festive spirit (by his own admission, a feat he thought was impossible!).

Our fitness session consisted of some Santa squats (inc jump down the chimney of course), turkey feet, holly heel flicks, Snowmen Star jumps and sleigh ride sprints! It’s fair to say, we did a decent amount of exercise on our task tonight – well done everyone!

It was a real pleasure to spend some time with you all in Hops bar for our social. We played the somewhat confusing ‘left right’ game. Suzanne and Alex triumphed! We played Snowman pass the parcel (all 24 layers!). Pam took the star prize on that one (a no expense spared plastic spinning top if I remember correctly!!). Amanda wowed us all with her cracker joke knowledge! And, the showstopper of the night must be Ginnie’s party trick. If you didn’t witness it in person, have a close inspection of the pictures and you’ll be blown away at what she can do with her arm!!!! Unfortunately for you, I can’t remember Phil’s little sonnet about his toes but I think the words ‘trim my tallons’ were amongst them! It was a lovely night filled with fun, friendship, laughter and for me, the perfect way to start Christmas.

Thank You I’ve moved the thank you to the end tonight as I feel I have so much to say thanks for this week. Thank you for the extremely thoughtful and most unexpected gifts that you bought for me. I really am so touched and unusually for me, felt a little speechless! I truly feel I gain so much more than I give and that it’s each of you that I need to thank for being such lovely, awesome and thoroughly decent human beings. It’s only been a few weeks since GoodGym Crewe started but during that time, I’ve met so many lovely people, all of whom I now consider friends and my little GoodGym family. Wednesday nights with you guys genuinely are the highlight of my week. Thank you for your commitment, support and just simply for being amazing.

Huge thank you as always to Pam and Barry for being fabulous back markers again tonight. A big thank you to everyone who filled a shoe box for the elderly – they were very gratefully received, and I know they’ll be putting a smile on someone’s face this Christmas.

And of course, a huge thank you to Crewe Rotary for allowing us to be part of their ‘Team Santa’ this evening. We hope we made a difference and we will be back next year!! Extra special thanks to Ben for helping to make tonight possible and especially for the pre-task chips which were gratefully received by a freezing Alex and myself!

Have the most amazing Christmas everyone! Take care and I can’t wait to see you all in 2020!! Everything for our January tasks will be on social media, so keep a look out on there for our first task of 2020.

GoodGym Crewe has had an amazing start and that’s down to each of you. As Alex said during one of our meetings yesterday, if we can achieve all this in the winter, imagine what the summer will bring! Here’s to an amazing 2020!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Lots of love to you all Nicola xxxx