This evening we completed a Community Mission in Exhibition Park. The weather wasn't the best for July but this didn't matter!

I was joined by Lucy and it was her first Community Mission. It was great to have a catch up as the last time we saw each other at GoodGym, was August 2019 and I was on crutches!

We were then joined by Louise and Dan, closely followed by Maneva and Bassam.

Please go and give Bassam a cheer, it was his first GoodGym good deed and his first visit to Newcastle! He was visiting from Jordan, preparing for University. Bassam told me that currently in Jordan, it would be very hot and about 40 degrees!

We all had a great time chatting whilst picking up litter in the park. Louise randomly found half a skateboard, Dan found another half (but didn't match) and I found someone's passport!

It’s lovely to see so many people using the parks across the city at the moment. Unfortunately this tends to mean lots of litter. Fortunately the GoodGym team, today comprised of Liz, Rae, Charlotte and me, were on hand to help! By chance, we bumped into Ed, the Urban Green ranger who is already planning to make use of GoodGym’s services and get back to regular collaborations across Newcastle’s parks. We were each armed with a bin bag and a litter picker. Charlotte and I battled with a wood louse-ridden hoodie and the wind (and won!) and Rae and Liz also filled their bags - judging by the number of alcohol bottles I’m not sure that everyone has been sticking to lockdown rules! As our time was up and we wandered back to the bandstand I was surprised to see Charlotte wielding a wheel! Someone must have struggled to get home - maybe they were responsible for some of the empty booze bottles!
GoodGym Newcastle wishes you all a wheel-y lovely Easter!

Tonight we completed a lovely Community Mission in Exhibition Park, Newcastle.

Thankfully the weather was actually nice for once (it normally always rains, especially when litter picking!)

It was good to be joined by Tom, Sam and Sarah. Thanks to Thomas and Sam
for bringing litter pickers along, this made a huge difference and we were very grateful!

It was lovely to welcome Sarah back as she completed her third GoodGym good deed and first Community Mission. Go and give her a well deserved cheer!

We met at the main entrance of the park and had a nice stroll through the park, collecting litter and having a good chat.

We had a good laugh, as I'd hurriedly brought/picked up a roll of black bin bags for tonight from the Supermarket. They turned out to be enormous (240 litres according to the label!) but they were very useful!

I'm sure we will be returning again soon.

I missed last week through illness, and therefore I also missed the reason why Evan and Andrew ran tonight's group run holding hands. I actually like not knowing, and I also like that it gave me an immediate pun for the report.

At 2:56pm today we got the email nobody wants on a Monday, telling me that the planned task for Changing Lives had been cancelled so I thanked my lucky stars that Peter was back from his travels in India and therefore able to meet us with his stash of litter pickers. This is why he is GoodGym's reigning champion of resourcefulness of 2018! We were off plogging instead! We warmed up with a word game that involved running around and shouting names of fruit and vegetables at each other which I hope you all agree is an excellent way to start your Monday night. I loved watching this one and it shall be repeated in the future. It was a high-energy welcome to new runners Dave and Harry who happily got stuck in.

KUDOS!

It was my turn to adorn the Geordie cloak of good deeds having logged my 50th good deed two weeks ago, and I swooshed and swished it all the way to our plogging destination: Exhibition Park and Claremont Road car park. As with everything #GGNCL there was a theme for the task and it was to collectively create an alphabet of litter as we went. Tanya and Deb were absolute queens of this, even logging a Z (zip ties) and Q (Quality Street wrapper). It's always astounding how much litter comes out of that car park and soon 6 massive bags of rubbish had been collected and deposited into the bin. Plogging is great for the soul and it's always good to see the immediate difference it can make too.

Onwards we went (I swished) into the park for a triple whammy fitness session complete with hills, steps, star jumps and finished off with strides, giving me the chance to share my favourite running form tips for a great sprint finish. Watch out parkrun- we are coming for you! Many of the gang were off to the pub to get a knitting lesson from Louise (with red wool- on brand!) showing that we are more than just a running club that does good deeds.

I just wish I knew what they were holding hands for.

There are not one but two chances to do good deeds this weekend! Join in with the monthly mission at Nunsmoor Park on Saturday or at Junior parkrun in Newcastle on Sunday Both will be led by our awesome task force as I am off to take part in the fabulous Marathon Talk Run Camp this weekend.

Can't make a weekend mission? Don't worry, we are back doing amazing things at Newcastle Uni for our Group Run on Monday where we are being joined by a huge team from Zero Light Newcastle . Get involved- it's going to be huge and there's a walking option too, so perfect time to bring along someone new to GoodGym.

Happy running, and holding hands.

Anji x

TWO new legends tonight showing Geordie runners are not fair weather runners because it was our most character-building Group Run yet. Welcome to the fantastic Faye and Ross who joined us for the first time tonight.

We jumped from Summer to Autumn in the blink of an eye today so numbers were down for our trip to do some litter picking at Exhibition Park, the huge green space alongside the Town Moor that is home to Newcastle parkrun.

After our weekly catch up we headed out for a few paired warm up games in the rain giving us the gift of ROSS being teamed with RACHEL "OMG WE WERE ON A BREAK" and many other Friends references ensued as well as the automatic conversation topic (best Friends episode) and Run Report pun (hello!) handed to me on a plate. In case you're wondering, the one where they learn to play poker in series one was definitely the best. A short trot to Claremont Road to collect the litter pickers from Peter and away we went.

With a smaller group tonight I set the alphabet challenge again where we have to try to collect an item starting with every letter of the alphabet. Many treats awaited us including dummies (D) jewellery (J) spade (S) and underwear, or knickers, or Y-fronts (U, K and Y depending on what you call them) and we managed to get almost every letter of the alphabet. There was one thing we all agreed on and that was that we were getting cold (C) and wet (W) so off we trotted to the Town Moor for the fitness session.

It was monthly time trial time!

Once a month we head out to run an exact 1KM section of the Town Moor which is always challenging as it's one of those freakish places that is always windy and occasionally has the added challenge of free range cows, yes, really. The wind was definitely a factor tonight but that didn't stop 8 of the group smashing out some amazing times including PBs for Carol Anne and Ross. Well done, what a start to the week!

Best of luck to everyone taking on the Great North Run and don't forget everyone is welcome at our get together at Brewdog on Sunday for post-GNR drinks from 7:30pm onwards.

See you for next week's group run to Smart Works

Anji x

You'd be forgiven for looking through our photos tonight and thinking all we did was mess about and play in Exhibition Park. There was some of that between all of the standard GoodGym Newcastle awesomeness

There was a big group to welcome four- yes FOUR- new runners to the family! Welcome Jack, Tom, Tom and Raff. You are now fully fledged GoodGym members who have completed group run greatness!

Tonight's group run was a bit of everything: silly warm up games, GoodGym leaflet drop on the way followed by a huge litter pick and fitness session in Exhibition Park! The big challenge was to complete an alphabet of litter. And no Dan, I'm not accepting FETUS for F because you found an egg, or X for Extra Chewing gum. Some interesting litter was uncovered including two bike frames, a seat, part of a fridge and general bottles, cans and crisp packets left over from another scorching weekend in the park. Some people (hello Paul, Amy and Carol-Anne) took some time out to hang around on the many climbing frames on offer as the task came to a close.

What everyone wants when its 26 degrees on an open space occupied by cows is to complete a 1K time trial so we popped over to the Town Moor to do just that. The cows were very accommodating and happy to mooooove out of the way while we warmed up with our (my) favourite drills.

At the sound of the whistle the runners were off! Storming across the moooooor in some blistering times as they tried to outdo one an udder on the way back to the finish. Kudos to Andy who was first in 3:12 and Sarah, first lady in 3:47.

It was back to pastures old (sorry, I will stop this now) for a good stretch and high fives on another excellent evening of doing good things, getting fit and loving our city.

Well done everyone, I might see you at the community mission Or at our next Group Run

Happy Running! Anji x