This morning, seven of the Ealing GG Crew got up bright and early to flyer in Northfields for one of our favourite organisations; The Log Cabin.

Tracey, Hayley, Jenni, Mike, Liv, Michelle and Milly took up the task.

Come 7am they were off and luckily I (Milly) was on my bike and found them on the go.

We spotted:

• Cats waiting to be let in for breakfast (noisy but friendly, Jenni said hi)

• Sunflowers bigger than our heads and taller than Mike

• Lovely window posters

We were blown away by the amount of stair action.

Flyers posted; despite maybe waking Sevan- he thanked us for his flyer in the group soon after... We were done and had managed not to wake the neighbourhood tapping letterboxes.

A morning mission is nothing without a coffee stop; we found somewhere open and enjoyed a brew.

Thanks to everyone that joined us.

This week The Log Cabin needed our help to spread the word about the awesome drawing competition they are having.

While they still aren't able to open and allow children to play on the site, they are encouraging local children to draw a picture of what play means to them for a chance to win some prizes.

Myself, Mike and Seven met on a scorcher of an evening to deliver flyers to all the nearby streets to let them know how to get involved. With the temperature above 30 degrees just walking provided a pretty sweaty workout but myself and Seven wanted more and also did more core work in the park beforehand too!

You can find out more about The Log Cabin and their competition here.

13 runners, many reasons to celebrate and whole lot of weeding - that's how Tuesday night went down!

Reason to celebrate number 1:

We were meeting on Tuesday night to do something in our community and it almost felt like 'normal life'. Whatever that means! 🤷‍♀️ We pulled up hundreds of weeds and made the playground a little bit tidier after a lockdown growth spurt!

Reason to celebrate number 2:

It was Milly's birthday! She decided that she'd like to spend her birthday evening hanging out with us and doing tasks in the playground to support The Log Cabin Children's Charity. 🎉

Reason to celebrate number 3:

Michael hit good deed number 2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣! That's 200 times he's been out to support charities projects and older people in West London.

Reason to celebrate number 4:

There was cake, cookies and other lovely treats to end the evening. 🍪🧁🍬

On a frrreeeezzing night in Ealing, 17 runners came out to help support The Log Cabin Children's Charity.

"I've got four layers on" - Chris

Big welcome this week to Laurine who joined us at GoodGym for the first time. You know the drill, give her a cheer!

We started promptly with a good warm up including the ministry of silly walks and a good old laugh at just how uncoordinated we all are.

We also got to know each other better by chatting through our worst jobs around the home. Mostly everyone hated the washing up (specifically washing up cutlery). Niche answer this week goes to Lionel who hates putting the cap on the toothpaste, I'm actually with him there.

Tonight's task was all about helping with jobs around the playground and garden and in particular one big task was trimming back the tree (or what we thought was a tree) growing into the main shed. Turns out it was a big old chunk of ivy and Lionel and Chris wasted no time in getting that bad boy hacked sheared right back. The rest of the gang weeded, swept and raked all around the site, giving staff there more time to spend on other projects. Boom.

Team work at the end saw us human train all the cuttings, leaves and weeds down to the composting area leaving us just enough time for a quick fitness session to warm up again for the run back.

We all agreed the hardest part of tonight was getting out of the front door but we were all glad we did for those sweet running endorphins. Also we're all now pretty smug knowing we've done something good and done a bit of exercise with our mates.

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So here's the update on the January Challenge, we’ve really made some awesome progress this past week and are now sitting pretty on 109 good deeds! Check out the rankings here. We’re trying to beat our numbers from last year and everyone who takes part makes a huge difference so get involved as much as possible in the next week.

How can you make a difference?!

Sign up for another group run or community mission - there are LOADS all across London and you can join any other GoodGym area, just filter on the right hand side to see what's going on - check out all the listings here.

Kicking off November with a bang 16 runners met to help The Log Cabin Children’s Charity keep their playground safe and clean so kids can run around and play freely!

We kicked off with a thumbs up, thumbs down warm up (much confusion here!) but it got everyone moving on this chilly evening! We did our head count and some more warm up exercises whilst discussing our favourite London tube station, (lots of lame responses that I’m pretty sure are just the nearest tube to your houses, come on guys you can do better than that) all whilst welcoming new runner Lucy (all the way from Dubai!) into the fold. Welcome to London , Lucy!

Our task tonight was all about leaves, this pesky things are pretty slippy right now making the playground not so safe. With a massive thanks to the Ealing Parks Rangers we were able to borrow a whole host of equipment en route to help us make the biggest impact possible.

Running through the streets of Ealing brooms, leaf scoopers and gloves in hand we arrived at The Log Cabin and got straight down to business. Working in pairs we swept, made piles, scooped and composted about 10 bags on leaves in total. We had a team excavating the sand bit, clearers on the basketball court and even had enough people power the rake the grass area too. Great team work!

After packing up we had just enough time to squeeze in some Sally Squats, oh yes what a treat and with a backdrop of fireworks it was an explosive fitness session! For many it was the first experience of Sally and I must say it seemed like a few of you weren’t too keen on her towards the end but needless to say you all smashed it!

A jog back, dropping off the tools en route we arrived safely back at base for some stretches and my top tip of the week is to do some calf raises while you're brushing your teeth, waiting for the kettle to boil or the microwave to ding. It's a great way of squeezing in some extra exercises throughout the day which will really help your running!

I'm off on holiday for two weeks now but the excellent Pritesh will be leading GoodGym Ealing for next two weeks, come along and get involved!

Thanks, news and celebrations!

Thanks to Tom for the political pun (can you tell he's a civil servant?!) and thanks to Shan and Alex for some excellent back marking. Huge thanks also to Chris who took on the lead and tool management.

Bring on the cheers!

Darren and Jay also completed their 10th good deed last night, it's been a pleasure having them both get so involved!

Lastly we have a community mission on Sunday to help Acton Park junior parkrun, still lots of spaces and roles to fill, see all the details here!

Another balmy evening in Ealing saw 15 GoodGymers out for a night of sweeping success at The Log Cabin!

Get your buts in gear!

We started with a series of warm up drills including some glute activation exercises, lots of runners (very much myself included) don't activate our glutes when we run so we did some simple glutes squeezes to see if we could wake them up before the run! I mentioned a kneeling hip flexor stretch you can do that's great for activation too - check that out here

On with the run!

Chris led the group on a slightly longer run around Walpole park while Alex expertly back marked a shorter route through the middle. Myself and Jenni led a run 1 minute / walk 1 minute group for those of us who are building back up from injury or are new to running, so many options available to get involved!

On with the task!

We arrived at the The Log Cabin to find a whole host of tasks that needed doing around the playground. Lots of weeding, sweeping, trimming and general tidying needed doing so we wasted no time in getting stuck in. We split off each taking on a section to make look tidier and nicer for the children who use this amazing facility.

Harvey, Jesse and Madiha all took on the task of rearranging the storage area and I must say it looked so much better when we were done with it! Milie and Tash took on some nasty nettles, while others worked to smarten up the edges and clear debris from the playground, great work everyone!

There was just time for a quick photo on the swings before locking up and heading to Lammas Park for the last of the evening light where we blasted through a fitness session. In teams we did sprints and a series of leg exercises for an extra workout before heading back to base for stretches and goodbyes.

See you all again next time!