We had another great night with the GoodGym gang this evening! And managed to make our green spaces look a little bit tidier.

It was great to welcome Hannah and Amber along to their first ever group runs with us. Give them a cheer and show them some support! They did great and mixed in brilliantly with everyone.

Amazing to have Ross back with us again as well as Lea after both being very busy and unable to attend for a while. It was great seeing you both!

Chris was also back from his travels to South America...and fully recovered from jet lag and altitude fitness...almost, he didn't tackle the GoodGym hill segment on Strava, so you know he was taking it easy and instead did a great job as photographer this evening...taking around 140 photos!!!

Before the litter pick the group went on a lovely 4km run through the gorgeous Bournemouth Gardens and it's lush vegetation, incredibly peaceful and a great route to take so that everyone can catch up. On our way to Horseshoe Common we stopped back at our meeting point to collect litter pickers and bags that the lovely Sarah had brought along from work.

The steady climb to the common was another km and when we arrived all sweaty we split up into teams of 4 and set off under the underpass to make our way through the woods to tidy up after....people who don't care. We found shopping prams, shoes, cans., condom wrappers, bottles, camping gear, blankets, needles, you name it people have chucked it away. The sad thing is that it's such a beautiful and peaceful area. What a shame. With time running out we met back at the entrance to the common to take some photos and wrap things up, then heading the short distance back to Flirt feeling better about ourselves.

We met new people, did some exercise, spent time in nature, took a lot of rubbish out of the environment. Pretty good going for a Wednesday evening!!

Well done everyone and thank you for coming. Next week we are doing some gardening and after that we are meeting up for drinks and food at a beer garden just up the road. Feel free to join us even if you can't make the run! BUT you know that you'll enjoy your drink after much more if you join in with the group run!

Have a great end to the week. Remember to make someone smile!

Another wonderful evening in Bournemouth, and with the promise of a bit of gardening for the first time this year as a task we had a great turn out.

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lovely people decided to come and do some exercise and make their a community a better place. If only there were a GoodGym in every city!

Tonight we welcomed Marianne to her first group run. She saw us at our meet up location one evening in our funky GoodGym shirts and was intrigued by us...looked it up and signed right up! Welcome on board, you were amazing and did a great thing this evening. Hope you feel good about it! See you next week!

Grace brought along her lovely flatmate Roshana to her first taste of GoodGym. Well done on giving it a go, we hope you come and hang out again next week!

It was also great to have Aoife back after some time off...please don't leave us again!

We were also very lucky to have a sneak peak into Poole GoodGym and the lovely lady who will be leading things there. Esther is amazing and we may not let her go....you guys over in Poole are very lucky. That will take place on Tuesday evenings and should kick off possibly in 6 weeks...maybe...possibly. Welcome to the family Esther!

Our task was just up the road so the gang begged for an extended run rather than taking it easy....such super motivated people, always great to run with them. They never complain, love a challenge and always take the difficult options. After a warm up to get us ready for things to come (including working on our people dodging) we headed down the gardens at a gentle pace, catching up with those around us and looking forward to what lay ahead. Rather than continue along the prom the gang were desperate to run up the Zig Zag onto the Overcliff, so we did that with ease and then posed for photos at the top, even though we could of kept running of course. Then we headed down the hill and Sarah, Abi and Neil did some downhill flying jumps cause they had that much energy. We hit the bottom of the hill and rather than taking the easy option along the flat prom the gang begged me to let them run up the BIC hill that takes no prisoners....I of course obliged.... At the top after taking in the views, and totally not being out of breath we headed to the next Zig Zag only this one was downhill and allowed for Caprice to take some great snaking shots with the Pier in the background.

At the bottom we headed along the prom and over to the Harvester where the gang again decided to push themselves....they ran up the long stairs to the top of the cliff....there's quite a lot... After all that it was time to run to the school and do some actual work.... Lorraine and Emily were there to meet us with all the tools and smiling faces. We hadn't seen them since last year around this time where we helped them in their garden. The school ended up winning the GOLD award in the Bournemouth in Bloom competition!

We were tasked with clearing out one flower bed completely....and there was a lot in there. The other one just needed some weeding. After handing out some gardening gloves, the gentlemen were....gentlemen and let the ladies have first dibs of them. Who says chivalry is dead???

The team split up into two groups, armed with spades, forks, shovels and good looks they cracked on. With only 40 minutes to get the job done they were on a mission. Tough ground that was dry like Neil's wit, was not obstacle for them. Ripping out dead plants, massive bushes and finding spoons, tennis balls and little play cars. Weeding in the other flower bed wasn't much easier as plants were growing in between in each other and that needed a little more dexterity. But these guys are GoodGym Bournemouth and they mean business...40minutes later and as you can see in the photos they had made those flower beds their b... own.

After a quick tidy up we all headed the short route back to Flirt for a stretch and debrief.

Well done everyone! Hope you had a great time. Well done on those hills and stairs, your butts will thank you for it this summer! hahahha

Thank you Caprice for backmarking and taking photos too....all after a 13 hour shift and 3 hours sleep. We love you!!!

See you all next week!

Good luck to Nicola and Aoife in their Triathlon this weekend! Try not to make others feel bad mmmkay...

This evening we had a visit from two lovely BU journalism students who wanted to do a story on GoodGym as part of their studies, with a focus on online and social media. After some questions and a bit of a video interview it was time for the gang to do what they do best and that is doing good!

The YMCA had asked us to help spread the word about their facilities with some flyers.

Last time our trip was a little stop start with some houses not having access to their letterboxes etc.....this time we picked a different route and it was waaaaaaay better!

We ran 2.5km to our start location and then split up into two teams of 7....one group doing one loop and the other the opposite one.... the team of Andrew, Heather, Daniela, Claire, Mark, Sarah and myself won the first round convincingly....

Once the other team, made up of Aoife, Caprice, Daryl, Chris, Abi, Kristina and Nicola, realised it was a competition they stepped up their game...and promptly won the second round....

With not many leaflets left the race was on for the final loop....and yep Team amazing who had won the first round finished off victorious... We didn't rub it in too much on the way back and we're still all friends!!

Thank you Caprice for taking some extra photos. And thank you Daryl and Heather for back marking!

Well done to Neil and Heather on doing a mission this last weekend. Chris managed to join the sub 20 minute parkrun gang with an impressive 19:42 PB...now the next challenge starts! He even beat his GoodGym hill PB....and thought he was going slow....Neil you can't afford to miss any group runs anymore....

We are looking to run the Studland 10km this Sunday morning. Let us know if you'd like to join and we will car pool over.

Well done everyone!! Next week we are doing a littler pick!

Stay happy and be present!

It looked like it might hold off for us again, and allow us another dry group run.....but then with 30minutes to go it started to drizzle....30 minutes later and we still have 14 lovely people ready to come together, go for a run and help their community! Legends!!

We welcomed Caroline to her first group who did great and didn't break into a sweat considering she's used to going waaaaaaay longer distances than our 8km from tonight. Hope you still had a great time and see you soon! Give her a cheer please team!

Nicola invited along Kristina to her first group run and wasn't put off by the soggy conditions. Thank you for joining in and helping out, hope you had a good time! Hope to see you guys and Aoife for the rock climbing on Sunday. Anyone else interested please get in touch.

Awesome to also welcome back John, we'll have you anytime you're free! I know you're busy Wednesdays already!

After a very refreshing 4km run there, Alex let us in out of the rain and had some different tasks for us this week. Nicola, Caroline, Kristina and Aoife started woroking on food parcels that were going out the next day. A parcel that is supposed to help a family with food for three days, so they had to make sure the right ingredients were in each. They manged to complete 8 of them in 30 minutes! That's awesome work!

Sean, Chris and Daniela started moving fridges and cold storage units to another part of the warehouse to make space for all the sorted crates of beans, fish, soup etc.The rest of the gang did the usual task of going through donations. Checking sell by dates and sorting them in the corresponding boxes.

35 minutes after arriving and after a flurry of activity the team got together for a team photo....adjusted their layers...gathered at the entrance and set off backt o Flirt...through the rain. But by now it was something we had accepted, and we were grateful it wasn't a cold night!

Next week after our group run we are looking to go out to dinner at a vegan restaurant right next to our finish location in the Triangle. Please get in touch if you can join us so we know how may to book the table for!

Well done all of you for coming out despite the rain. Hope you feel great about yourself!

See you soon!

This evening we ran to Relate Bournemouth who's services include relationship counseling for individual couples, families, children & young people.They also offer Mediation for couples and families as well as psychosexual therapy. It was the first time visiting them and we were super excited to make new friends but also paint....we love to paint!

We welcomed some lovely new faces this evening. Nicola,who was on her second group run, has been spreading the word and brought along Aoife to give us a try. She also convinced Lea to join up and become a member! Great to have you ladies along, you did a fantastic job and got stuck in but also chatted to everyone else in the group! Our type of people!

It was also lovely to have Fernanda and Alba along for their first group run...we are building quite an international group! Welcome, we hope you enjoyed it and will be back next week!

We must have done a decent job last week as we didn't scare Catherine or Pawel off, who both came back for their second group run! Well done you two and well done team on being so welcoming to new faces!!

We also welcomed back our favourite photographer Le who due to some injuries wasn't able to run with us for over three months!!! So happy to have you back!

Not knowing how big the therapy room was that we were painting, we didn't want to hang around too long so set off pretty soon, and jog as our warm up. Their offices were around 2.4km away so it was a nice and short run....with a fairly long and steady climb to start with. Soon the layers came off as it was a very warm evening! We arrived sweating more than we should have been...only to be greeted by Claire who pointed out that boiler was broken and the radiators were on full blast!!!

**Who needs Hot Yoga when you can Hot Paint!

We were first tasked with sanding down the walls a little to prep the surface for the paint, but there were only 3 sanding blocks to start with so the other started with filling the trays with paint and using masking tape to tape off sockets and skirting boards etc.

It was quite amazing how 14 of us managed to move around such a small area without any accidents or major mishaps! Moving furniture, switching positions and roles, communicating on what needed doing, helping each other out...

dropping driving licenses in paint trays..

We managed to finish the whole room just in time and they were super happy with the job done. Pretty sure that is the best paint job we have ever done! Well done all of you, you guys are amazing. Hope you manage to get all the paint out of you trainers, leggings, shorts and tops....and have a great night's sleep dreaming of happy things from all the good you did this evening!

Good luck to Grace, Nicola and Aoife who are running the Half Marathon at the Bournemouth Marathon festival this Sunday. I hope it goes well. Stay positive and remember that you are stronger than you think!

See you all next week as we head to Boscombe for a slightly longer run and a visit to the Foodbank to sort through some donations! Sign up here