Wednesday evening saw a slightly earlier than usual GoodGym mission to Hearing Help Essex, Meadow View Cottage. The earlier start was carefully planned to accommodate what we all hoped would be a memorable World Cup football evening. Sadly, some hopes and dreams were left lying on the pitch later that night.

We gathered at 6pm, ready for what could only be described as an epic endurance challenge. By "epic endurance challenge", I of course mean a gentle jog run in the heat. There were three runners taking on the journey: Andy, Rich and myself.

This was my first outing as Run Leader, with Rich acting as my mentor throughout the evening. Think Obi-Wan guiding a slightly confused Luke Skywalker, only with fewer lightsabres and considerably more conversations about football.

We discussed Andy’s football gathering (or "gav" if you're still young enough to know what that means), where apparently gourmet pizzas were being offered to the Good Gym lads. Meanwhile, Rich shared tales of a non-refundable wedding booking from several years ago along with his and Jane’s upcoming vows in a few weeks.

We got stuck into tackling the ever-ambitious weeds in the garden. Armed with determination, gardening gloves and varying levels of horticultural expertise, we made a real difference to the space. There was some discussion on whether they were weeds or a plants.

There was certainly hard work involved, although any references to blood, sweat and tears are probably attributed to events later in the evening involving football rather than gardening.

Poor Sallyann did not get the memo about the change of time and reached us as we coming to a close, but it was lovely to see her.

After a productive session and successful community task completed, we headed home feeling pleased with our efforts and still high on hopes of bringing the World Cup home.

A thanks to Jedi Master Rich for helping this rookie Run Leader survive her first mission. The Force was definitely with us.

Who wanted to watch England play in the World Cup anyway?! Not us. When we set off England were 1-0 down, but on our run to the task we heard a loud roar, and Ben ducked into The Wheatsheaf to check that, yes, England had equalised.

The lovely garden at Hearing Help needed weeding, especially the lawn, which was a bit of a jungle. Rich and Jess got the tools out, and after a quick safety briefing of DON'T GO NEAR THE HEMLOCK! we started pulling up weeds.

Another loud roar soon told us that England was now 2-1 up.

Ben and Martin got straight on it, I was distracted by a low flying kestrel but eventually put my bird app away and started work.

Fay and Sallyann arrived on foot, and together we filled a big rubble bag with weeds, and left a nice patch of cleared lawn for Hearing Help to enjoy.

We had nearly finished when Andy turned up. He's settling into retirement so well he's forgotten what time it is.

When the tools were away, we watched the house martins flying round the mill, and went home to watch the highlights.

A pun only those of Andy's age may get.

There was initial consternation from the GoodGym Chelmsford leadership that not enough people were signed up for the huge number of leaflets, but it should not have been a concern as Richard 'the postman' (he always delivers) was there.

Fay like baa baa black sheep, had three bags full and they all got delivered. Hit the leafletting so hard that there is only one photo!

Only the strongest ran all the way there and back, Jen and Laurie.

Great work, for a huge number of local charities.

Our final group run of 2025!

We met the lovely Callum from Active Essex, joining us to learn a bit more about GoodGym so it can be promoted to more people around Chelmsford.

It was a very important evening for us: not only the last group run of 2025, but we were also going for drinks and takeaway afterwards. I made it clear that there was no time to waste with chatting - specifically aiming this instruction at Rich, Andy, and Russell.

Fay, Jess and Joel set off walking with the leaflets (beautifully folded as ever), whilst the rest of us took a slightly longer way out to run to meet at our starting point on Broomfield Road. We didn't get off to a good start at all - the first lot of houses had no letterboxes. We sped off up Swiss Avenue, and meandered our way round the surrounding streets until we got all the leaflets delivered. Apologies to Russell - he didn't time waste and probably delivered the most leaflets.

I was SO focused on getting the task done, I only took one photo. It's a good one though, especially of Jane. Hopefully Callum's photos were good and I can add them on afterwards!

Thank you all for a great 2025, and see you in 2026, if not at Christmas Day parkrun.

Merry Christmas!

Laurie

Winter has come!brrrrrrrrr.🥶

After deciding that it was far too cold to run we decided that tonights task of leafleting would be a fully walking group session.

We met in the Old factory car park where Fay met a few people dropping off some donations for the xmas food drop.

Tonights task was to deliver leaflets for a plethora of local charities leaflets that some are in the broomfield area, so we decided to canvas the Avenues, starting at first and seeing how far we got.

With Ben and Jess on one side if the avenue and Fay and Andy on the other we flew along chatting away about many a topic but also next weeks social at the all you can eat, SAN restaurant. Which we decided that those who turned up this evening shouldn't have to pay for.... did i mention it was very cold? 😉

We managed to get as far as fifth avenue before we ran out of leaflets before quickly returning to base to warm up.

Thanks for coming guys, and next week will be a walk and talk with the ideas hub. Hope to see you there.

until then, RUN HAPPY

Rich

10 GoodGymers made quick work of preparing a bumper crop of leaflets ready for our leaflet drop next week. The leaflets were sorted and folded in no time, which meant we could have a chinwag as we finished our drinks before the run back to HQ!

We will be leafletting along the avenues next week, you can sign up here: