We're a socialable bunch in Ealing and every first Tuesday of the month we run and then we party. This week it was all about pizza!

Great to see everyone, have a catch up, a bev and chow down on London's best pizza!

Put the next date in your diary now - Tuesday 7th April!

14 was the number of wonderful GoodGym souls who came out last night to help clear the area surrounding the Hanwell stretch of canal for The Canal & River Trust

Congratulations!

We kicked off tonight with a few acknowledgments of some pretty awesome stuff you've all been doing. Mike, Jenni and Lionel all got huge PBs at The Big Half on Sunday. Along with loads of other GoodGym members our Ealing crew of Lauriane, Hayley and Chris also ran and put in some spectacular performances too! But the biggest congratulations of the night goes to Callum who passed his driving test yesterday, now that's a BIG deal!

We did a very brief warm up in favour of setting off as quickly as possible to get back for a pizza-the-action at our social tonight! So donning our litter pickers and new super bright lights we headed off in search of some areas we could transform near the canal.

With such bright lights to help us we were able to cut through the dark park on the way to the water tonight and even did a spot of litter picking through there as we went.

'Pick up the litter at full speed, you're not allowed the stop!'

We were taking plogging very seriously last night and after doing some speed picking on route we stopped at the canal to do a proper clear up of the canal and particularly the approach to it.

'Lauriane is recharging her batteries'

We all split off making sure we had seperate bags for litter and recycling before regrouping to show our findings. Sadly there was more litter than anything else but the find of the night goes to Lauriane who hauled a huge heavy car (or boat) battery from the bushes.

After calling time we proceeded to run through the streets of Ealing, full bags in hand making sure we disposed of the litter correctly. Finding a bin was easy (we use proper Ealing Council rubbish bags) but finding a recycling point however was another story... We ended up running nearly two miles with our recycling bags before we could properly dispose of our pickings. Although we were grateful of the extra strength training we found it quite unbelievable that it took so long to be able to find a recycling bin.

Some quick stretches and we were off for pizza!

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• GoodGym Ealing meets every Tuesday at 6:45pm from Bodyline Studio come and join us next week!

• We also have lots of community missions at other times - check out the listings here.

• Every first Tuesday of the month we have a social, pop it in your calendar for next time!

Rain threatened just before but that didn’t stop 14 of us coming out to support Cultivate London last night.

Cultivate London are an urban farm and social enterprise that sponsor and train unemployed young people in landscaping and horticulture. All whilst also working to engage communities in food growing and changing the way Londoners think about their fresh produce and where it comes from.

All the news:

• GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead launches next Wednesday 26th February. A few of us are heading over to support and if you've never been to a launch before, they are great fun! Sign up here to get involved.

• The GoodGym Games are happening on Saturday 18th July this year in Oxford. Chris will be team captain from Ealing this year and will be rallying the troops for the event but you can sign up here.

• The 2020 GoodGym Shindig will take place over the weekend of Friday 7th August - Sunday 9th August and I'd love to see a few of you guys from Ealing there! The Shindig is for everyone who wants to be involved in making GoodGym as good as it can be, whether you've done one run or 100 everyone is welcome, new runners especially! You can find out all the details here, be sure to register your interest!

• Race for free when you volunteer at Hackney Half - That's right if you volunteer at this event you get a free place at another event. And they ain't cheap so it's a good deal!

And the most important news of all...

• Our pizza party social is happening after the run on 3rd March - sign up right here so I know how many to book a table for.

Recap of last night:

No newbies this week but Alec and Mathilde both hit 15 good deeds for a shiny new badge on their profile. Go give them a cheer!

We warmed up with the classic question of what’s your favourite animal (lots of cat lovers) before setting off at a nice pace across Ealing Common and down to Acton. The run out felt great, (thanks downhill route and tail wind!) and we even had the energy for 10 press ups at a traffic light break.

When we arrived, Auberon from Cultivate was ready for us where our original task was put on hold in order to help move a wrongly placed pile of wood chips instead. They’d been delivered in front of a gate that needed to close to be able to lock the site.

But we didn’t have a chip on our shoulder about it...

Working in pairs we filled bag after bag of wood chips so that the gate could be released. We lost count of bags after about 30 but it was probably close to 70 bags we filled and shifted. What a workout!

With sweet freedom for the gate achieved it was time to pack up and head back where we now faced a slight uphill and head wind. Great resistance training if you ask me!

We wrapped up with some stretches just as the heavens opened with some biblical rain and hail. How’s that for timing!

See you all next time!

16 came out to ride the end of storm Ciara and do some good stuff in Ealing!

Starting with a round up of this week's news:

• Oxford are going to be the host city for this years GoodGym Games, more details to come but read about last year here. We’ll be getting a team together to head there, can’t wait!

• Lots of community missions coming up (these are the sessions outside of our Tuesday night led group session). Come and join us for some extra good - see the listings here.

• The big 6 races have been announced! Every year the GoodGym community pick 6 races across the country and meet up at, race and have a good old knees up after. Check out the list here as well as all the info on joining the race team and let me know if you fancy getting a crew together to go to any.

So about last night

We started with a warm up and chat about the best things we’ve won. A few pub quiz crowns, the odd bottle of Champagne but the best has to be a two week trip to Australia. That’s pretty epic!

We also welcomed Alex to her first GoodGym session, big welcome!

We had three options tonight, jet lagged Jenni walked to the task, newly qualified run leader Chris led a slightly longer run and I led a shorter direct run. Once we’d all arrived it was down to business.

We were helping St. Mary’s church move lots of items down from the top pews to the ground floor as well as giving the neglected area a good clean. These pews had been serving as a temporary storage area for too long so everything was a little dusty and needed a generally good tidy up.

After another expert human chain to get everything downstairs it was hoovers, dusters and buckets of water at the ready for a good old fashioned clean up. Everyone got stuck in and left no pew untouched.

The highlight of the evening for many though was the excitement of being allowed to climb the church’s impressive tower. A narrow spiralling staircase (which seemed never ending) takes you all the way up to a platform on top of the tower where you’re treated to some awesome views. We’ve been promised we can come back in the summer to really appreciate them as today’s weather made it a bit of a windswept affair.

We finished we with a shorter run back and a quick tabata workout with a mix of balance, strength and coordination drills. Smashed it.

See you all next time!

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.