Tonight's run (and cycle) and task flew by with pure Goodgym efficiency! Susie left us with instructions to clear the Greenhouse and the relay to the wheelie-bins began leaving a few brave faces to take a crate that was a tad spider infested!!

A big well done and thank you and get well soon to those feeling a little under the weather...see you soon!

"What's that Skippy? There's a cottage down at Interact Creek that needs clearing?"

Seven Goodgymers donned their Hi-vis and trainers to brave the blustering wind and run to help Interact clear their cottage ready for their next chapter as they continue to provide a beautiful service to young people in and around Chelmsford.

We welcomed Nicola for her first good deed for Goodgym (woohoo) and Joe set the pace to lead the way down to Moulsham Mill.

The lovely Susie met us and explained the task and told us about the wonderful work Interact do. We were asked to clear out the house and fill the skip outside. But tonight was bittersweet as many items held sentimental value and the urge to reuse and recycle had to be balanced with the need to clear out the cottage.

It did not take long for our team to fill the skip and we ended the task taking the saved items over to the old Mill in the outback of Chelmsford. There was a sense of achievement as we ran back to base with our very own young Joey!!!

Struth mate this report has tenuous links!

For those of you totally confused by the title just watch this and sing Skippy the trash can-go-phew: https://youtu.be/hByob-5pPEs

Enjoy the social everyone: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/goodgym-vs-beer and last but not least a huge congratulations to Jenny and Becca for a romantic announcement and a significant achievement.

Seven GoodGym runners met up at our usual meeting place at Anglia Ruskin University for our regular Wednesday Group Run. It’s almost like pre-pandemic times! After a brief introduction speech we did some Olympic theme poses for a photo opportunity. Warm up completed, Adam led us along the river as Andy backmarked to Interact to clear more of the weeds from their paths.

As we got to Interact, Susie was just leaving and mentioned she had left some drinks and biscuits in the greenhouse along with the tools for the job. Kirk couldn’t think of anything else for the next half an hour but that didn’t stop him getting the job done. The only thing stopping people was my inability to open the greenhouse. Thankfully Anna pointed out it has sliding doors rather than push/pull doors… Doh!

As we have done this task a couple of times before everyone knew what to do. Anna started clearing the furthest bit of path. Andy and James went to the middle bit. Caroline got stuck into the cracks in the paving and Adam and Kirk made sure they were as near to the biscuits as could be.

After about half an hour it was time to pack away and enjoy some juice and a biscuit as our reward for our hard work and make our way back to the University. We were a bit short on time so did some lamppost sprints on the way back as our fitness session, and might have made it back a minute or two late… Sorry!

Stretching done it was time to say goodbye. Thanks for coming everyone, see you all again soon!

Eight runners were glad to meet back up at ARU's Mildmay Gym for the first group run of 2021!

After a long catch up, Joel led the run down to Interact to get started on weeding the bark covered path in their beautiful garden. The group spread out along the path and used a variety of tools to pick out all the weeds. As he wasn't leading, Russell C was able to get stuck into the task!

Whilst we were part way through the task, Rich appeared with some rocket ice lollies and water. Everyone had a well deserved break to enjoy their lollies. Thanks Rich!

We finished off the patches we were weeding and said farewell to Rich before heading back to our starting point.

Well done everyone for helping to clear loads of weeds on such a warm evening! Its great to see you all at a group run again and we're sure Interact will be impressed with how much we managed to clear.

And finally, Happy Birthday for tomorrow to our wonderful Area Activator Russell!

Laurie

The 23rd June was meant to be our first Group Run for well over a year. But as ‘freedom day’ was delayed so was the return of our beloved Group Runs. Thankfully the task we had set up could still go ahead as a Community Mission instead. And so for the first time since the pandemic began we returned to Interact, the place where GoodGym Chelmsford started almost 5 years ago.

We met up with Susie who gave us a low down on what Interact does and some of the programmes they are running at the moment. Susie also bought along her lovely dog Winnie to say hi to the group. She wasn’t a distraction at all! 😍

Our task was to clear the garden paths of any weeds that had been growing. We got some gloves, hand trowels and forks and made sure we spread out to get to work. Anna and Lucy focussed on the path around the back while the rest of us paid attention to the front, Toby made very impressive progress on his patch. We managed to clear quite a large amount of the paths in the time we had. Emptying our buckets into the compost bin it was over all too soon. Before saying our goodbyes we had a few refreshments (well it would have been rude not to) and went on our separate ways home.

It was lovely to finally be back at Interact and doing some work in the gorgeous Aspire Garden, hopefully it won’t be so long before our next visit!!

11 Goodgymers ran to interact to paint some planters!

A big welcome to newbie Cara who was straight in to the grove with both the running and the task as we returned to the interact garden at Moulsham mill.

Susie from Interact set out our task this week which was to paint some pipes that were going to be used as planters so that they could be set up and planted, and a trench was to be dug for them to go into beside the old garage floor.

The team were straight in with the paint displaying a range of artistic talent but all with bounds of enthusiasm as they quickly covered pipe after pipe with bright colorful designs.

We were also given tea and biscuits before heading back to the hub with a race! We split into two groups one a slightly shorter route (although there are still discussions as to which was the shortest!) and pushed the pace back to the Cathedral where we regrouped for a steady return to base.

With one quote of "best task ever!" join us next week to see if we can improve on this!