Monday 9th September 2019
Report written by James Poole
On a pleasant summer night, a record breaking 24 runners met in Wanstead to get fit do good and celebrate, Goodgym legend, Dharmesh's 100th task!
With Goodgymers travelling across London to celebrate Dharmesh's milestone, our meeting point at Wanstead House Community Centre was bursting at the seams with runners excited to do good and get fit in the process. By my count we had eight different areas represented and it was awesome to see everyone try to fit in our tiny meeting space at the back of the centre.
A few words about Dharmesh. In just one short year Dharmesh has become a firm favourite among Goodgyms across London and even in other cities. He's raced, completed missions, been to many (many) socials, traveled to other countries, represented Redbridge at the Shindig and in the GG Olympics. In short, he's been a key part of the Redbridge group and contributed to plenty of others. It was an honour to celebrate his 100th task and the sheer numbers of people who traveled east to join him is testament to his popularity. Great work on 100 tasks in 365 days!
After a short briefing and some words from the 'man of the hour' the team was soon working hard on tasks around the Community Centre. From time to time we do tasks to help make the Centre look better and with so many runners we were able to paint railings, pull down ivy, crop overhanging trees, cut back overgrown bushes and even sweep up leaf fall. It was a hive of industry and within 45 minutes the place looked great and all the tasks were complete. Nice work guys and girls!
With the task done is was time to get fit with a GG Redbridge favourite - High Five Fartlek on George Green. To get warmed up Peter and Dharmesh led the group on a short warm up jog before the squad began the interval session. In this fun but challenging set, runners are paired up and run in opposite directions on a 300m loop. When they meet they high five and alternate between a hard and easy effort. It's an awesome way to add some speed to a run and even 20 minutes of running can be surprisingly effective - and tough.
All that was left was a quick stretching session before celebrations could begin with cakes and biscuits - some expertly baked by Rob Riley in aid of Live Unlimited. Rob is running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in aid of this great Barnet charity and would welcome any donations. So if you had a cake (or didn't) last night then please donate whatever you can spare to Rob's Justgiving page here. Good luck Rob!
What a brilliant evening! Fancy getting involved in more GG runs. Click on the link on the top right of this page to sign up for more Goodgym fun next week!
A local community centre that provides classes to members of the public.
See moreTue 10th Sep 2019 at 11:35am
Thank you all so much for coming to my 100th. I'm really grateful you came and made it so special! My 1 year of GoodGym has been amazing because of you. Special thanks to people that baked lovely treats and those that traveled far to be there - it means a great deal to me! See you soon. Thanks for the kind words, James
Tue 10th Sep 2019 at 12:25pm
Congrats Dharmesh, such a great achievement in less than a year! Here's to the next 100 :)
Tue 10th Sep 2019 at 10:08pm
Big CONGRATS!!!!
Redbridge
Helping those in need in Redbridge