A call out from our buddies at the Vineyard reached us to donate supplies to help them to continue to deliver goods to homes across the borough. At this unprecedented time, the Vineyard are experiencing the perfect storm of people being in greater need, a massive drop in food donations, and the complete loss of income from the shop and café - so they need our help now more than ever!

The group were delighted to take up the task. Luckily, with the supermarkets being a bit more stocked up it wasn't hard to tick off many of the goods the foodbank are running short of. Topping up with some generous donations from neighbours.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, we donned our GoodGym T-shirts and each made our way to the Vineyard - ladened with rucksacks jostling against our backs as we ran, or looking like a circus trick-cyclist, with bags on backs, cereal boxes in baskets, and tin cans in panniers.

Kevin greeted each of us as we arrived - shouting out 'Hello GoodGym' & waving (from a safe distance!) Cathy and JP managed to 'bump' in to each other & bid a fond farewell for now...not before snapping a pic from a 2m distance :). AND our very own Anita and Harry may have even been captured in all their GG mad-bicycle-donation by a film crew...oooooo!!

It was fab to see the whole community come together from all walks of life donating what they could.

Next week's task for Richmond Foodbank is already live so sign up & donate what you can!

7 goodgymers met at St Joseph’s hospice to help pack away their jumble sale in what has become a regular Hackney favourite. The sale takes place every quarter and gives this local charity a huge fundraising boost, with the takings often running into the tens of thousands of pounds. After I’d had a quick recce with task owner Emma, we split into 2 teams: upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs consisted mainly of bags of clothes and shoes which had to be brought down to the basement in our big blue trolleys. A bit of gymnastics was required to manoeuvre 3 trolleys and 4 GoodGymers into the lift at once but we soon had it mastered. Kudos to Amy for her bag stuffing skills in the store room, not an inch of space was wasted. Team downstairs cleared the books, bric-a-brac and assorted jumble in double quick time and we had the whole place cleared in under 90 minutes. The team were full of praise for team GoodGym so I’m sure we’ll be back for the next sale.

With the (seemingly) ever-present trainer Joel on a well deserved break, it fell to little 'ol me to look after the marvelous Hackney crew on their latest Abney Park adventure.

After sorting out the necesary paperwork for the lovely Sasha's DBS check (anyone interested in doing one to go on missions and/or coach runs, check online and bring your paperwork to a group run for Joel to check!) I had the pleasure of meeting a whole bunch of new faces to the Goodgym family - do give Meryem, Juliette, Friederike, Amanda & Georgia a cheer or two as well!

Formalities over and done with, including the always taxing head-count, Amy led the team over to Abney Park, where we found a couple more Goodgymmers waiting alongside task owner Quentin, who explained our task for the evening. A last minute change due to circumstances meant we were starting on spreading woodchip along some path ways a month earlier than planned, since the lovely English summer weather (read: rain) meant the fresh woodchip was deteriorating quicker and as such had to be spread sooner! Que a crack squad of Goodgymmers tooling up with rakes & shovels & wheelbarrows to attack the pile of woodchip and create some Perfect Pathways in the Park under the watchful eye of Quentin - title pun!

Realising time was flying past while having fun, we packed away the tools, said our goodbyes to Quentin and followed Amy back to base, with Eva making sure everyone got back to the E5 Bakehouse safely. A few stretches and everyone made their way home again, happy after a nice run & work-out.

Next week Hackney master Joel is back, with an office move for Hackney Pirates - please do sign up on the right of the page!

Thanks for having me,

Peter

Well tonight we found out it takes 24! What amazing January evening, we all gathered in Wholefoods , both old and new faces greeting each other, full of enthusiam and ready to do good.

We started with a super informative warmup that worked on our strength training before setting off for a 5km total run along the river. It was lovely to chat to runners who were visiting from other areas (Helen) and those that had come for the first time - welcome Helen C, Alistair and Katie. The run was buzzing with conversations and we carried on exercising our voice boxes at the task while we worked.

For our task tonight we were back at Buccleuch Gardens to put down compost and plant some "mixed plants". We formed a strong team sharing out different tools as we worked our way around the flower bed.

There was a great buzz about tonight , it was lovely to see everyone chat as we got our hands dirty even sharing some important gardening tips (what was that smell?) - which way should the bulbs be planted Eva?!

Such a great night and it ended with some useful technical tips in the cool down including how to look after shin splints. Thanks Mark!

Well done to Carla on her second run and thanks to Eva for a great pun! Salwa - wash those hands!!!

Just to refresh you all on the news:

• Well done to Laura on 50 good deeds, hope to see you next week Laura, get well soon.

• Great to be able to congratulate Nicky for her 100th run tomorrow , well done!

• Unoffical unoffical GoodGym socialising Facebook page can be joined by any runner who fancies more information on what GG is up to in other areas, when the central socials are or even just a chance to vote for the pun of the month!

• there is now a Goodgym Richmond running club on strava that you can join

• if you wish to be part of the Richmond Taskforce (and we need more members) please speak to Mark or a taskforce member

• Keep logging those kilometres and deeds for the January Challenge - you're doing AWESOME!!