Tonight, there were ten of us for Tenovus.........

Meeting back at Sport Wales once again in Sophia gardens, it was a slightly drizzly start to our evening, we all chatted whilst waiting for everyone to arrive and then made our way into the dark night.

Thankfully the rain stopped as we started, at last a dry Tuesday run. We made our way through the City Centre and already you could begin to see the set up for the Winter markets, we talked about our bowling night this coming Friday and other socials that we could set up.

• Fireworks
• Ice Skating in the Castle grounds
• Our yearly Xmas Party (fingers crossed)

Keep your eyes peeled for them on the website!

We suddenly found ourselves at a very strange set of lights, with the green crossing light somehow turned around to face the cars so we could no longer see when it was green. We managed to safely cross the road and got to the Tenovus shop dead on time to start our tasks for the evening.

Carl met us, as usual with a smile.......I say as usual, this is the first return since pre-pandemic, so it was wonderful to finally be back again. We said our 'Hi hi's' and it was time to get to work, splitting into teams and off we went.

• Pricing and sorting the DVD's
• Tagging, sizing and hanging donated clothes
• Steaming clothes in the hanging area
• Pricing puzzles
• Dressing three mannequins

Andrew, Jamie and Martin went to work on the media.

Estelle, Hannah and Lydia hit the pile of clothes after a quick demonstration of the taggers and steamer.

Michelle and Sean made their way to puzzle corner and with puzzled looks began counting a 1000 piece jigsaw (unfortunately there were 3 pieces missing).

This left Su with her favourite job of the mannequin dressing.

30 minutes went by in the blink of an eye, in this time lots of clothes were steamed and ready to be priced in the morning. The DVD's had been completed and Martin was now helping Su with the remaining mannequin, after lots of arguments the puzzle had been counted and found to be missing pieces but we had managed a couple of smaller puzzles. A quick photo in the Halloween window and it was time to head back.`

It was a mild Tuesday evening when sevenofus descended on Tenovus to help redecorate their window displays. After a brief post-lockdown catch-up, both with each other and with Carl from Tenovus, we went inside ready to begin – bearing in mind the win-DOs and win-DON'Ts of the current social distancing rules. "Hold your clothes-horses," said Carl once we entered, "Before you start, I have a surprise for Ben."

He disappeared into a back room and reappeared moments later, carrying a huge cake and a going-away present for our glorious run leader, who will shortly be stepping down from his position in GoodGym Cardiff and moving to Cornwall.

The writing on the cake read, "Good Luck Ben," no doubt referring both to his imminent relocation, and to the amount of luck he'll need to eat such a huge cake.

Ben thanked Carl for such a kind gesture and then we got to work: stripping down the mannequins in the windows and scouring the shop for the trendiest outfits in which to redress them. There was no time for a dummy run – everything had to be right first time. Luckily, our stylistic choices were validated early on when our half-finished display caught the attention of a passer-by who would no doubt return in the morning to buy the whole lot.

After the dummies (and the mannequins) were finished, the displays were completed with a few choice book selections, and then we had just enough time to play a few rounds of "Guess the price of this surprisingly valuable item" before we bade farewell to Carl and went our separate ways.

Thanks to Emma and Ellen for the help with the puns – it would have been a pane to think of them all myself!

What a turnout, 40 runners came to GoodGym this evening and for 7 runners it was their first time ever GoodGym run! It's amazing that nearly the whole population of Cardiff came tonight, okay, not literally, it was actually 0.011% of Cardiff's population, however that is a good number and the most we've had to date.

The new runners to GoodGym this week were: Rosey, Ben, Clare, Emma, Skye, Vicky, Lawrence and Lauren! It was ABSOLUTELY LOVELY to have you come along. I really hope you come again as you already feel part of the GoodGym family. I know we are quite a lively bunch and the warm up activities aren't the most 'serious' warm up drills, however I really believe it's important to have fun whilst we get fit and do good in our community!

Achievements

• A huge well done to our two red lace winners. Well done Sara and Alice! #LifesGoals. Alice and Sara both brought friends to GoodGym this week and therefore earned themselves a single red lace. It is a fact* that wearing a red lace makes you run faster.
• Adam, one of our lovely regular GoodGym runners has had a baby (Not Adam himself, but his wife) - Congratulations Adam x
• Awesome that some of you volunteered at junior parkrun on Sunday - You are helping the athletes of the future.

Warm up

To warm up before the evening's run we played 3 different games. We played the game 'Fish and Chips', 'Captains Coming' and 'Marmite, Digestive and Staycation or Vacation'.

Let's get our walk/run on

Mali led the walking group. She had a contingent of 4 walkers! Ellen led the more relaxed paced runners to the Tenovus Charity Shop. Ben led those runners who wanted to run a bit further this evening. They went plogging and leafletting.

*Welcome to the Tenovus Charity Shop *

As runners arrived to Tenovus, Carl explained the mission of the Tenovus Cancer Care charity. If you have cancer or you’re close to someone who has cancer, it can be frightening and stressful. Tenvous tries to help. They bring expert advice, emotional support and life-saving treatment to the heart of communities. They help cancer patients and their loved ones cope, and our their vital research gives hope.

After Carl explained about Tenovus charity and the tasks. 24 runners jumped into action and helped get the shop ready for spring. They sprung into action, steaming clothes and tagging them up ready to be hung out on the shop floor. Some of the runners helped to tidy up the racks of clothes, and dusted down the shelves. Others put price stickers on the cds, dvds and lps. We dressed mannequins and sorted sizes. Others looked like they were having story time around a pile of books - but they were just pricing them up 😀 All in all, they carried out tasks that would have taken the staff and volunteers all morning to do.

*Litter picking and leafleting runners *

9 bags of litter were collected in total in approximately 20 minutes! 4 streets were leafleted with flyers about GoodGym.

We then played Bring Sally up and Bring Sally Down - It's not something any of us will forget in a hurry.

Time to head back

After returning to Big Moose it was time to stretch out and reflect on the evening's run. Ben led the warm down and everyone clapped runners as they returned.

After the walk/run everyone headed to the Glassworks for post run drinkypoos.

2020 Tweet Off

WAHOO! Megan you have won the tweet off THREE consecutive times and have overtaken Marie. Marie will be nervous now. Lucy, last year's winner hasn't made the leaderboard yet - but there are still 11 months to go and a lot can happen between now and the end of the year.

• MJ - 3
• MOH - 2
• Razzle Dazzle - 1

RunPunStiltskin award

. Ding Ding Ding. Gareth came up with this weeks pun for the title of the run report - You, my friend, get a point!

• EW - 2
• BA - 2
• AS - 2

• GD -1

• May not actually be a fact

This evening, 27 GoodGym runners got fit and did good in the Cardiff Community; The run this week also celebrated The Great Get Together.

A HUGE welcome to Chloe and Will who were both running with GoodGym for the first time EVER! Nabeel brought along Will to GoodGym which earned him a RED LACE #LifesGoals. Rumour has it, runners used to pray to their red laces before races for good luck. It is a fact lost in history that the red lace actually helps you run faster! Nabeel and Will have been friends for 13 years and they've also mentioned there is friendly competition between the two of them so we are looking forward to see how this unfolds at future runs!

• Also worthy of a mention is Lydia's achievement of reaching the 50 good deed milestone! - She has now earned her milestone t-shirt :)
• The mission runners and coach runners who are doing extra runs outside of Tuesday evenings in order to help isolated older people.

The evening's run celebrated Great Get Together, The Great Get Together is inspired by Jo Cox, who was killed on 16 June 2016. The Great Get Together brings communities together to celebrate all that unites us. It was no secret that running, helping in the community and socialising with each other brought everyone together for this evening's run.

The Warm Up

Along with the standard jogging, butt kicks and high knees, are warm up also included a game. This was a GoodGym Cardiff first! The game was called 'Can you guess the number?' Runners were asked to guess a number between 15 and 30, guess correct and they are allowed to rest, guess incorrectly and you have to do the fitness activity that corresponds to the random number e.g. if the number is 24 and no group guesses correctly then they have to do 24 star jumps.

We ran in 3 groups to this evening's task. We had the Speedy group led by Welsh Dave, the Sexy group led by Mikey and the Pacer group led by Ellen. Mikey had his group doing wall squats at every opportunity and Welsh Dave had the speediest ones in his group doing out and back runs to wear them out! Despite being in the Sexy group, Will showed the pace in his legs when Ben asked him to sprint to the end of the road.

Welcome to the Tenouvus Charity Shop

Carl welcomed us all into his shop. It was warm in there... he explained that he had the shop heating on to try and dry the paint as they've already painted 2 coats of yellow in one of the rooms. Carl remembered that Aimee, one of our runners, knows a lot about Tenovus. He called upon her assistance to share with the runners the story behind Tenovus.

Carl had the following tasks for us:

• Paint one of the office walls green
• Paint the sorting room yellow
• Dress the shop window on the right hand side
• Size & colour coordinate the clothing rails

As there were LOADS of us, 6 of us went out for a plog of the surrounding streets. In just over 10 minutes, 3 bags of litter were collected; some memorable finds included: a wheel cover, Aunt Bessies roast potatoes packaging and a can of red bull. Llion was tracking litter far into the distance and then running to collect it.

Alice took the opportunity to relax during the task, she was caught in the act by Welsh Dave who took a photo of her in the chillaxing in the inflatable donut. Ellen dressed the person in the shop window in a rather interesting way, at first she only gave the manikin only one shoe.

Thank you loads for your help GoodGym

Carl said a massive thank you to us for our help. He then bid us well on our run back!

On the way back we took a detour via the local park. We climbed up the climbing wall and then went down the slide. Some local children joined in with some of the running and joined in the fun we were having and followed us down the slide too.

We then continued running to town and back to Big Moose. The final stretch was down Queen Street. Many of the runners increased their pace dramatically and many members of the public turned their heads in response wondering what on earth was going on!

Runners covered distances from 3.7km to 5km today - Well done everyone

The Tweet Off!

After the run we headed to the Glassworks Pub and got ready for the tweet off. You can see the runners faces of concentration in the photos taken at the Glassworks.

Well done Darren - You've proved that you are still a force to be reckoned with in the Tweet Off! Here are the current standings on the tweet off leaderboard -

• LM 8
• MG 3
• DRN 3
• EW 2
• NS 2
• MJ 2
• BA 1
• NI 1
• AG 1
• WD 1

It's goodgym day!

Yes that's right. Tuesday is here at last! And I (Ben) am also glad to be here to lead the group run with you all. After arriving back to Cardiff from Seville one hour before the start of GoodGym I'm glad my flight was on time and I made it back safely!

We are now settling back into Big Moose (One of the best cafe's in Cardiff, if not the best!). We started with a warm up... playing a fencing style warm up game whereby we had to get into pairs and then try and be the first to tag our partners leg three times. The winner had to do 10x star jumps and the loser 10x squat jumps. Next we played a game of 'rock, paper, scissors', however our actions for each had to be extremely expressive and involve considerable physical movement to ensure the game gave everyone a sufficient warm up - the game also involved running so it was definitely a good warm up!

We then quickly regrouped for a headcount and declared/announced our favourite holiday destination - people shared some very fancy holiday destinations!! ooooooo. We also took a few moments to introduce ourselves in the headcount and give a HUGE warm GoodGym welcome to LLION! Welcome to GoodGym Llion; we are this crazy and fun all of the time and we hope you find comfort in coming along and being part of GoodGym Cardiff - You are more than welcome :)

Feeling warm, ready and raring to go, it was now time to get into our groups! Mikey was leading the speedy group, Ben was leading the sexy runners and Aimee was leading the sexiest walkers! Before setting off each group was allocated a back marker that made sure nobody got left behind!

Let's go!!

Aimee and Lucy were part of the sexy walking group tonight.. the whole of Cardiff were turning their heads and doing double takes as they demonstrated the sexiest walking ever seen at GoodGym! Some people had to pick their jaws up from the floor because they were that darn good at sexy walking!

The sexy group displayed the sexiest running forms EVER and Cardiff was definitely most impressed! (Apparently people didn't blink just to be able to look at the runners for longer undisrupted).

The speedy group... well they were too quick to be noticed... they were like the secret agents of the running world!

WE'RE HERE!

Carl, the manager of the Tenvous store on Clifton Street, was so pleased to see us! He greeted us with a huge smile on his face and welcomed us in. He said "I know you like to run and do good and I have some tasks which I'd be really greatful for your support with". Carl told us that he needed each of the windows decorated in a Spring theme, he needed some clothes steaming and also he needed clothes sorting so that stock that wasn't selling could be moved to a different store.

Let's get to it! Immediately we began doing what we do best... working as a team to get the tasks we had been set done as good as we could in the alloted time. There were 2 groups dressing the shop windows, Lucy and Darren were steaming the clothes and another team were sorting through the clothes to bag items that would be sent to another store.

Halfway through the task Carl brought out an expensive Burberry designer jacket. How much do you think this jack retails for? Everyone's brains began ticking... I won't tell you the RRP of the item, but I can tell you that you can pick it up at the Tenovus charity store at a very good price and much cheaper than if you brought it brand new!

After 30 minutes the windows looked amazing, many clothes were steamed and stock that hadn't been sold was bagged up!

Thank you so much everyone!

Carl couldn't believe how much we had got done in the short space of time. Carl, supported by Aimee, then went out to judge the window dressing contest. There was a winner for the best family window display and another for the best spring themed window! A huge well done to both teams.

Now time to run back!

It was then time to run back. Mikey led the run back with Ben back marking. The run back was fast and there was still time to spare before the end of the run. Not wanting to waste the opportunity for more GAINS, Ben had everyone doing shuttle run sprints for the final 5 minutes. To end the run we gathered in together for a warm down. We took the opportunity to do stretches whilst reflecting on the evening's run.

WELL DONE EVERYONE! Get signed up to next week's run now by clicking here!

On Wednesday evening a group of Goodgym runners fought their way through the crowds of shoppers, on their way to decorate the Tenovus shop front window ready for Christmas.  Seven Cardiff goodgym runners were joined by three from Bristol to make the perfect 10 – ten of us helping out at Tenovus!!

The group set about decorating the shop. Alison and Deborah dressed a mannequin ready for a Christmas jumper day – Anthony took inspiration and bought a Christmas jumper from the store ready for work on Thursday. Mikey, Nathan, Danica, Lucy, Martin, and Ellen tackled the Christmas tree, tying strings for the baubles (or failing to tie  in Martins case!) and arranging a display of presents around the base. Meanwhile, Aimee set about redressing  a tall, dark and headless stranger - his abs were something to behold she informed the group.

As the task started to wind down, Alison, Nathan and Lucy took on the challenge of untangling Santa sleigh bells – while the rest of the group ate chocolate, heard about the history of the charity and pretended to not be irritated by the incessant jingling.

The staff at Tenovus were delighted with the work we’d done, and the ten of us were pleased to have been able to help. Ten of us gathered outside for one last picture at Tenovus and departed our separate ways.