Area Activator for Wandsworth and Hounslow. All things running. For fitness, fun, racing and to feel good - and for everybody!
66 Month Streak
107 Month Streak








































Block or report Anastasia Hancock
Wandsworth
📍Paradise Cooperative Garden SW18 3JE
Come and help shift the donated manure at this gorgeous community garden

Wed 29th Oct at 6:30pm
Hounslow Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Last night featured a collab with This Girl Can to highlight the #Lift the Curfew campaign, a mega skip challenge, and GG Hounslow becoming a media sensation - all in one evening! You can't say we don't pack it in at GoodGym sessions.
Our task was at Strand on the Green school, where the plan is to create a safe pathway from the tarmac to the field for the children. To do this the caretaker needed to clear a lot of unwanted items into a hired skip. This is where we came in!
First, we met at the gates of the school with Jasmira, from Sport England. She gave us an introduction to the Lift the Curfew initiative, which aims to raise awareness about the safety issues women face when getting active in darker months and to help reduce the barriers to exercising. This is something that we definitely support, as
Everybody has the right to run
Jasmira was there to take some footage of us hard at work - so we got to work! There was loads to shift, from heavy wooden structures, to plastic fencing, weird massive hanging baskets and even a traffic cone (a nice reminder of our student days. You can see it perched atop the skip in the photos!)
It was quite the workout, but when the skip was eventually filled we still had just a little bit more energy left for our fitness session. This week it was Halloween themed, packed with silly spooky moves but still guaranteed to work all the major muscle groups!
Shout out to Luis, Emily and Lucy who put in star turns in front of the camera. Can't wait to hear your wise words go viral.
We've got a couple of lovely missions coming up - can you help?
On Saturday 15th November we're off to do a massive bulb planting challenge at Chiswick House
On Saturday 22nd November we have the opportunity to help out at the field where Bend it like Beckham was filmed with an exciting task trimming and maintaining a 100 metre hedge!
Wed 19th Nov at 6:30pm
Tue 4th Nov at 6:30pm
Do good for this community space - and get a workout thrown in too!
Read moreTue 28th Oct at 6:30pm
Westminster Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Last night we were back for our second regular visit to the Abbey Centre near Victoria. It was great to be back and see all the busy sessions happening at the centre, from art therapy to AA, community champions to community choir, hot meals for rough sleepers, language classes, support groups and more...the place is a true lifeline for local people.
Our job for the evening was in the beautiful courtyard garden at the back of the building, so after being led through the huge building we grabbed tools and got to work.
The task was to sweep and clear the space, and we wasted no time clearing the leaves from the beautiful climbing tree. The place was obviously home to quite a few pigeons judging by the number of feathers we also picked up!
It didn't take long to get the job done, but it was easy to see the difference.
We'll be back next month for another session at this amazing place!
Next week we're back at St Andrew's youth centre, sign up here
Mon 27th Oct at 6:30pm
Wandsworth Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Last night we #Lifted the Curfew with a special Halloween themed session that got us all out on the dark streets of Wandsworth to do good and get fit.
Our collab with This Girl Can is all about getting active outdoors in the darker months - something very close to our hearts here at GoodGym! Too often women don't feel safe running after dark. We believe there should be no barriers to anybody who wants to get out at night in the place they live, especially to spread some community love. We want to help highlight the message that there should be no curfew for anybody - our city belongs to us all.
So after a warm up, and a quick discussion about our favourite scary movies (this was our spooky Halloween special after all), we headed out towards Lark Hall park for our task.
We talked about what lifting the curfew meant to us.
Some of us noted that we remove headphones when we run at night so we can be hyper aware of what is happening around us. Some said that they take the long way round parks and public spaces to avoid being too isolated. One person had done a self defense workshop put on by This Girl Can just the week before, and many agreed that they would completely avoid poorly lit spaces after dark.
We also had the idea of creating a resource where it could show us the busiest routes are currently happening, and we would welcome a Strava tool which highlighted the safest place for women to run.
As a group we arrived at the park to find the Friends of Lark Hall park waiting for us with tools and instructions. Our job was to tidy up the beds around the trees, remove dead branches, sweep up the leaves, weed and litter pick. There was plenty to keep us going!
It was great to see what could be done with so many pairs of hands working together, and after 40 minutes the place was looking much tidier. We helped put away the tools, and it was lovely to get some appreciation from other park users as we passed!
Job done, we hit up the kids playground for our fitness session. Steph demonstrated how to zipwire in a most elegant fashion, before we divided up into pairs for some frightful fitness featuring zombie fast feet, jumping spiders, vampire squats and a few tricks thrown in for good measure!
There was just time for the skele-run back to base, before enjoying some incredible Halloween treats and a competitive (if small scale) game of pumpkin rolling. A (belated) big shout out to lovely Beth for reaching that magic 50 milestone - give her a massive cheer for doing so much good!
Nice work everybody. Don't forget about our weekend mission at Paradise cooperative garden on Sunday. Next week we're back at Doddington for our monthly session folowed by pub quiz - join us!
Wed 5th Nov at 6:30pm
Wed 12th Nov at 6:30pm
Wed 29th Oct at 12:00pm
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