This was Andi's final task before she heads on her travels.

It was very fitting that the task was to help The Feed, who she has worked for the last few years.

Tom from The Feed greeted us at their cafe in Waterloo Park, and our tasks were to give the inside some maintenance, which included cleaning the doors & windows, touching up paint, fixing wobbly tables & chairs as well as some other little tasks.

We topped off the evening with a trip to the pub to give Andi a great send off.

Jenny, Tasha, Elizabeth, Andy, Jonathan, Bobby arrived within half an hour of each other. Jenny had started by filling shelves and then Andi gave us a tour of the new shop opening Thursday. Flat pack furniture was our task today 🙈 Tasha was on her own putting together a file cabinet for the office, Jenny & Elizabeth put together two lovely chairs for the quiet room, Andy completed another chair on his own. Bobby and Jonathan put together the staff lockers. Great job everyone. We finished tidying up box’s, & packaging, posed for a photo, job done. We wish The Feed well for their opening Thursday, a community shop, unfortunately much needed in the current very difficult financial climate. The pleasing thing is the number of companies big and small who are donating goods to this worthy cause. Also fresh foods from those with allotments with excess produce, such a good idea

This was our first Saturday Group Run for a while and what a great morning it was.

A nice GoodGym crowd ran or volunteered at Catton parkrun at the start of the morning, most of which stayed on for the Group Run too.

We were then met by a few others at Catton Park, who hadn't completed the Parkrun... I mean who would want to run twice in one morning!

So we had a nice casual jog to Waterloo Park. The Feed have just taken on and reopened the Pavilion Cafe there. Our task was to clear the weed and flowerbeds around the Pavilion Cafe to give it an added touch of glamour.

A big welcome to Fran who was taking part in her first GoodGym endeavour.

The Friends of Waterloo Park provided us with the tools so we could really give the area a good makeover. We were so passionate about it at we stayed for nearly 2 hours and after that remained there for longer to have a bite to eat.

The Feed generously offered us a complimentary hot drink for our efforts.

The before and after photos really show what an amazing job everyone did. So much so that half of the team couldn't even keep their eyes open for the group photo at the end hahaha.

A great way to spend a fresh and bright Saturday morning with a run to the forum to lend a hand at the mince pie stall raising money for The Feed. I was met by Scott and Chris who explained all the good work that the social enterprise does helping people with barriers to employment get back into work. All the mince pies had been made by participants on the scheme! There were lots of lovely customers who alongside picking up their mince pies were interested to learn more about The Feed. Many people took advantage of the pay it forward scheme and these donations will go directly back into supporting the brilliant work the team does. Obviously I had to try some of the mince pies at the end of the day and I can honestly say they were some of the best i've ever had!

This was the penultimate Group Run of 2019.

A big welcome to Sarah who was doing her 1st GoodGym encounter.

James was visiting us from GoodGym Redbridge, we love a bit of GoodGym tourism.

Congratulations to Michelle who has completed 10 good deeds.

A special task tonight as we were supporting The Feed, who let us use their kitchen, to make mince pies that will be provided at a charity carol concert on Wednesday evening to raise money for Keeping Abreast.

The aim was for us to make at least 150 mince pies.

It was only about 1km each-way and Jasmine led a group of 5 walkers there.

We had a little production line soon set up but as there were so many of us we did another relay session so half of the group was running while the others in the kitchen. We had people greasing the trays, cutting pastry bases, filling the pies, cutting the pastry toppings and then placing them in the oven.

There was also room for a couple of people to put together another work station (Catherine enjoyed the greasy poles), put some new sticky floor grips down and give the place a little bit of a clean up.

I still believe the mince pies here are the some of the best I've ever had (not that I was eating them all... just one that broke up) and there was some creativity in making toppings spelling out G-O-O-D-G-Y-M.

We smashed the target and made about 180 mince pies.

A special thank you to Dave Tuthill who helped make this happen and his company are sponsoring the carol concert on Wednesday.

Katy is leading next week's session when you are making Xmas Crafts at The Clare School.

If I don't see you at the Xmas Meal on Wednesday, I wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

We had a whopping 5 new GoodGymers this week so a massive welcome to Rosie, Emma M, Michaela, Emma W and Rute.

Darren was completing his 50th good deed this evening, well done big man aka our regular pun connoisseur.

Catherine was backrunner and Robert walk leader - thanks for volunteering to do these duties.

This evening we were heading to The Feed on Prince of Wales Road, a short 1km trip but rumours were flying around that there would be Gas Hill later in the evening ;-)

Lucy met us at The Feed and had a box of flyers for us to hand out to local businesses and residents, to help promote their cafe. We group split into 6 groups of 5 then went off in different directions to get as many delivered as they could, which they did a sterling job.

Probably at some point they were all thinking "what exactly was Hitch doing while we were posting flyers? Was he sitting with his feet up having a cuppa? Was he taking stupid selfies in the mirror in his sexy leggings? Hmm". The truth of the matter was That's Norfolk TV were filming us so I did an interview with them discussing how GoodGym is the best thing since sliced bread and that everyone needs to get involved.

Being the kind trainer that I am I also got the group out of running up Gas Hill so that they could be filmed during a fitness session at The Forum. On paper this sounds like a win win situation... until they found out what the fitness session involved.

Could it be make or break for the new runners? It was a risk I was going to take and I did emphasise that I'm giving them abs, to try and take the pain away. So yes this meant one thing, the 4-minute ab-hold tabata workout was upon us. During this 4 minutes of sheer hell (I can't think of a better way to describe it) I granted permission for anyone to curse me as much as they wanted to haha.

It will be interesting to see how that comes out on TV!

Afterwards, a good group of us finished the evening at the pub to wind down.

Next week we're visiting Oxfam.