Holy crêpe! 20 GoodGym'ers ran 6km as they did a litter pick of plogging around Bishop's Avenue

Another Tuesday evening crêped up on us fast! Despite the cold and dark weather, GoodGymers came out in their shroves to run and do good in their community!

A big welcome along to Francesca and Niamh who joined us for their first GoodGym run, and to our GoodGym Kingston tourists, Kate and Rob. Lovely to have you join us tonight!

Once everyone had successfully located and navigated the labrinyth that is the Hammersmith BetterGym we headed outside for the intros and a round-up of the week's news in our wonderfully glamorous warm-up spot...the corner of a car park! 😂

Have I got shoes for you!

1. Race volunteers needed - Volunteer at The Big Half - Sunday 1st Mar and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

2. Community Missions - Lots of Community Missions happening this Saturday! We'll be helping Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers from 10.20am, sign up here. Check out all the other upcoming Community Missions here.

3. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here. To join the GoodGym Team click here.

And, the BIG news of the week...it may have taken 20 soles to find her match but eventually Katie has found love with some new running shoes, 11 years after she bought her first (and maybe only?!) pair of running shoes* 👟🙌.

Life is batter with GoodGym!

We started our warm-up tonight with some high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and dynamic stretches before a quick blast of the 'number exercise' challenge, great for warming-up both the body and brain! The number '4' was added this week to keep everyone on their toes, and because as Matt said "everyone's a pro at this now". The team certainly dealt with this addition well...so next time '5'?!

With everyone nicely warmed-up we headed off on our nice and simple route tonight, straight down Fulham Palace Road to Bishop's Park Avenue. There was a lot of weaving in and around pedestrians so we decided to head down towards the river where it was far quieter and far more scenic! Along one of the streets we found a perfectly flat wall that just had 'wall sit' written on it so we stopped briefly for our weekly wall sit before continuing on.

Despite the biting wind it was great to run along the river path. We regrouped at the closed part of the river path and asked one of tourists tonight, Rob for an exercise. Clearly not trying to make friends with the team he suggested burpees?! Luckily for the team, our other tourist, Kate suggested the less brutal game of 'head, shoulders, knees, torch'....more mind games! Ultimately, it was Kate who was declared the winner! 👑

Getting fitter removing litter!

Matt led the way down to and through the tennis courts of Bishop's Park which lead to Bishop's Avenue, the road we'd been asked by the Parks Officer to do a litter pick on after all the storms and windy weather of late. As we headed down to the end of the avenue it seemed that there actually wasn't a huge amount of litter to be seen. The Council may havelitter-ally just beat us to it.

How much litter would a litter picker pick, if a litter picker could pick litter? 🚮

However, there was still litter to be picked so the team split into two groups and headed down opposite sides of the avenue with Matt and Chris kindly holding the hawklights to enable there to be more light! Amongst the railings there were wrappers and bits of paper gathered up, while many carefully wadded and sifted through the vegetation, pulling out and bagging lots of interesting finds; these included the sole of a shoe, 'hippy crack' canisters, and lots of bottles.

Tom emerged from a treasure trove of dumped weird and wonderful items with his hands full of rags, bags and broken objects. He had it all! With the temperature dropping and the thoughts of pancakes at the forefront of everyone's minds we called it a night and took a team photo with the four full bin bags of rubbish. Top work team!

As the team headed towards the big bin to throw the bin bags and other loose bits of rubbish away they received a lovely "thank you" from one of the gentlemen playing on the tennis courts. A lovely way to finish 😊.

Trash in the pan

With the trash mob complete we headed off back to base. Thankfully the streets were far emptier on the way back and required less weaving in and out to be done. I'm pretty sure we made it back to base in record-time! Back in our lovely warm-up spot we had a good stretch-off and all headed either home or onto the 'pancake party' hosted by Lucy.

To set the scene, here's a throwback from 2003.

Lucy had made 4 pints of batter to feed lots of hungry GoodGymers! Andrew and Katie started off on pancake cooking and flipping duty, stacking up lots of perfectly-made, and some rather 'on the paler side' pancakes. The selection of toppings was second to none, any topping you wanted it was there! Amongst some confusion and hilarity around who was a vegan (turns out Bev wasn't!) we also tested out some vegan pancakes with almond milk...I think the general consensus was "it's a no from me" 😬.

I went with the sad face pancake while Katie tossed one of hers on the floor...

This pancake then became the 'flipping' pancake, one person would flip the pancake in the air for someone else to catch and there were varying results...sometimes it was caught and other times it was back on the floor! According to Katie, the trick to a good flip was a hot pan!

A pan after Katie's heart...

Flipping perfection

Lucy finished off the last of the batter by wowing us with her pancake art of a unicorn and the GG logo - truly amazing! With lots of pancakes flipped, stacked and eaten it was time to call it a night.

Thank you for the stacks of lovely pancakes, Lucy, they were flipping amazing!!

Shoutouts 📢

1. Well done to Tom for completing a windy and royal Hampton Court Half on Sunday, and for backmarking tonight.
2. Good luck to all those running The Big Half on Sunday! If you're cheering or volunteering, look out for Lucy, Alice, and Speedy.
3. A big THANK YOU to the best pancake host and artist, Lucy!

Next week's task is still TBC, keep an eye on the WhatsApp group and your emails! Sign up for next week's run here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend 😃. Hopefully see you next week!

*This is definitely not recommended! A good rule of thumb is to replace your running shoes every 300–400 miles to prevent injury.

17 GoodGymers ran 3km back to school to help out John Betts Primary

It was another chilly night but this didn't stop 16 hardy GoodGymers from joining me tonight to help out again in Eloise's school, John Betts Primary. Much to everyone's delight, all the jobs tonight would be indoors in the warm!

After coming along to our starter session last month, it was lovely to welcome along Shauna to her first Tuesday H&F group run.

Que Ciara, Ciara

As we headed outside, there was no sign of Ciara, and Dennis was running later than Katie 'I'll meet you at the task'! 😉 - jokes aside, if you’re planning a Saturday run I’d recommend you get it in early doors to avoid the storm!

News, news, news

1. The 'Big Six' Races - They've been announced for 2020! Check out the list here.

2. January Challenge 2020: 'Extraordinary Task' Award - read more about the award here. Submissions are open until midnight on Wednesday 12th February.

3. Race volunteers needed: Volunteer at The Big Half - Sunday 1st Mar and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

4. Last Saturday of the month Community Mission with Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers. For all the details of the session on Saturday 29th February, click here.

5. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here.

School runnings

Following a pulse raising warm-up which involved some high knees, spotty dogs and ‘dancing feet’ (out out in in) we set off to John Betts Primary School, with Lucy kindly backmarking to ensure no one was lost en route.

Having successfully navigated our way around all the pedestrains, we paused briefly to allow everyone to regroup and much to everyone's delight Alice’s exercise of choice was squats, rather than burpees or press ups!

The naughty children, Matt, Jonathan and Katie had sped ahead and whilst waiting for us at the entrance, decided to do a self-imposed wall sit - a wise decision to prevent further punishment!

The great divide

We entered via the large front door and were greeted in the main school hall by the school caretaker, Matt and his daughter, Emily. Following a quick brief with Eloise around the numbers and how to divide the group, Matt explained the tasks for tonight:

• Help sort the library books with the PTAs 📚
• Help sort the maths equipment 🧮
• Clean the staircase and skirting boards 🧽

The chill in the air makes us numb, but maths makes us number

'Team Maths' headed upstairs with Eloise to one of the classrooms and were faced with lots of different coloured trays all filled with very unorganised maths equipment - a sign of children having far too much fun learning maths?! With an attentive GoodGym class, Mrs Nash explained all the sorting that needed to be done. Coins, cubes, rulers, clocks and scales were among those that needed sorting. The final aim and the pièce de résistance was each classroom having the same coloured trays rather than a mix of colours. Oh the satisfaction!

Biscuits had far too much time on his hands as Lucy addressed the scale of the problem.

Andrew was in the money, Alice was the new kid on the block, while Helen proved she ruled at winding up all the measuring tapes.

Not all maths puns are terrible, just sum!

Mo arrived just in time to see Speedy's cone above his wonderful sorted shapes as he got stuck into the tray sorting, while Eloise and Lucy ensured there was some child's play amongst all the hard work...

Sorting complete, the team headed downstairs and armed themselves with cleaning cloths and products. Venny, Biscuits and Sarah gave the stairs a good clean up while Shauna, Andrew and Matt got down on their hands and knees to give the skirting boards a deep clean - and they were sparkling once they were finished!

Ready, steady, book!

'Team Library Books' - Tom, Bev, Cookie and Katie went with Matt across to the Library where the PTAs had made a start on sorting all the library books according to their sticker colour. Each sticker colour was linked to a specific genre, these included Green 📗 = Nature, Blue 📘 = Science and Technology, and 📙 = History.

All the library books were once upon a time grouped by genre in the library but over the past few years had become very jumbled up. It was decided that a complete sort of all the books was required.

The small but mighty team grabbed handful after handful of books, sorting them into their correct genre piles - some of which became slightly precariously balanced as the evening went on.

We'll do this job by the book!

As the team sorted through the books they couldn't help but have a quick read through some, Tom brushed up on his history, Cookie picked out the classics such as Thomas The Tank, Bev learnt more about trees, while Katie sought some top in-line skating tips!

With all the jobs completed, Lucy choreographed a throwback 'school' team photo on the benches complete with a trophy. Fun and games over we said our goodbyes and thank yous to Matt and Emily, and headed outside. Sadly, there was no time for a fitness session tonight, but we did manage to get in a few more jumping jacks and spotty dogs to warm-up before we began our run back to base. Once back at base we had a good stretch off back before heading home or to the pub. Class dismissed!

You stay classy GG H&F!

Wonderful work tonight team! 😊

Shoutouts 📣

• Thank you to Katie and Lucy for their extra snaps, and to Lucy for both backmarking and for posting on 'gram live from the task!
• Well done to Sarah, Biscuits, Eloise and Matt for completing an undulating Richmond 10k.

Next week

We've got another indoor task! We'll be painting at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, sign up for the session here. Have a great rest of your week!

23 GoodGymers did some school running as they went back to school to lend a hand at John Betts Primary

It was a deceptively chilly night but this didn't stop 22 warm and hardy souls from joining me tonight to help out with a whole heap of jobs in Eloise's school, John Betts Primary.

Tonight we welcomed along, Mary, Venny, Sophie and Dan to their first H&F group run, thank you all for coming along and lending some extra hands tonight, hope you enjoyed it! 🙌

With everyone layered up and eager to get started we headed outside to our lovely and 'glamorous' cordoned off car park spot for the intros and news round-up...

Ain't it school news

1. January Challenge 2020 - we're into the last few days! We've completed 157 good deeds and run/walked 1,725kms, which smashes our 2019 totals of 107 good deeds and 1,627 kms. Check out the GoodGym leagues here.

2. Upcoming races - there's some great upcoming events that other H&F GoodGym'ers are getting involved with: Sunday 2nd February at 9.30am - Wimbledon Common 'Dash for the Splash' 10km and Saturday 8th February at 10am - Richmond Park 5km & 10km.

3. Cheer everyone! - there's a new '📢 Cheer all' button that enables you to cheer everyone who attended the session...although in a slight 'faux pas' tech error, it appears that you'll also give yourself a cheer too 😳.

4. 'Humans of H&F Exhibition' - a wonderful exhibition presented by United in Hammersmith & Fulham, on at the Lyric Theatre until 22nd February. Our very own H&F GoodGymer, Katie (K-A-T-H-R-Y-N 😉) Hodges is one of those 'humans' featured, see if you can spot her!

And....a big WELL DONE to Eloise who achieved TWO PBs at the weekend, one at parkrun and one at the Farnborough Half! 🥳🙌🏅

As a school of thumb

Following a pulse raising warm-up which involved some high knees, lunges, fast feet and a favourite of mine at the moment, the 'number exercise' challenge (great for warming-up both the body and brain!), we set off to John Betts Primary School with Cookie kindly backmarking, to ensure no one was lost en route.

Having successfully navigated our way around pedestrians and the streets of Hammersmith, we paused briefly to allow everyone to regroup, and much to everyone's delight had enough time to fit in a quick wall sit. Despite being a real 'quad burner' 🦵🔥, this exercise is great for runners as it not only builds isometric strength and endurance in the quadriceps muscle group, glutes, and calves, but also prevents runner's knee. I promise I don't torture you every week without good reason 😄!

Wall sit completed we continued on our run. It wasn't long before we all arrived at the front gates of the school and entered through the large main...well all aside from Cookie, who I may have forgotten to inform which door it was we had all disappeared through 🙈. The team were greeted in the main school hall by the school caretaker, Matt and his daughter, Emily. Matt explained that like many schools, due to constant funding cuts, any money available to schools goes directly into education rather than into general school maintenance and upkeep, so was very appreciative for all the helping hands tonight.

"Thank you, you lovely mad crazy people" - Matt

School's paradise

Matt and Eloise had drawn up a long list of jobs for the team to get stuck into, these included:

• Moving 10kgs of bagged wood chips to the climbing area 💪
• Sorting and labelling of school uniform for the PTA 📋🏷️
• Moving books from one room to another 📚 - with the bonus of stairs workout in-between!
• Moving two filing cabinets 🗄️🗄️ - again, with the bonus of stairs!
• Sorting the top-floor storage room 🗃

There was lots to keep the team busy tonight!

The team split into three groups to tackle the list of jobs. One group headed back outside to the climbing area with Matt, the second group headed up the stairs with Eloise and the third group stayed in the main hall. Within minutes, their were red and black GoodGym shirt both inside and out, and a real hive of activity.

Friends with benechips

Bev, Alice, Speedy, Andrew, Dan, Sophie R, Matt, Annabel, Milla and Cookie all got stuck in to the upper-body workout of wood chip shifting and mulching. Matt gave the first large bags of wood chips a helping hand over to make it easier and quicker for the group to scoop and distribute the wood chips to the 'danger' areas of the climbing area - the areas that needed more wood chips in order to be as 'fall-proof' as possible.

"We're all barking mad" - Bev

Despite the challenge of the cold and darkness, the team worked incredibly hard and efficiently to move the entire 10 kilos of wood chips! Some scooped, some carried and distributed containers full of wood chips, and others spread the piles of wood chips. Boom! One job done!

How much wood could a GoodGymer chip, if a GoodGymer could chip wood?

Book at them go!

Eloise headed up to the library with Marissa, Annabelle, Analiese, Tatty and Sophie C. The group had been tasked with the physical workout of the relocation of many books, where stairs had to be negotiated first up and then down while carrying a finely balanced pile of books. The team completed this with ease and emptied the shelves in super-quick time!

Time to run a file?

Next up was the job of moving two filing cabinets down the stairs. One proved a great deal heavier, thanks to some rather age-old paperwork that was removed then carefully placed back in once the cabinet had been relocated.

Off the cuff

The small but mighty team of Sarah, Lucy, Mary, Venny and Zanoubia set to work sorting crates of school uniform clothing: skirts, shirts, jackets, blouses all into the same age sizes and folded into nicely labelled bags. I jested that by chance, Sarah happened to be involved in the job that had not one but two of her favourites...bags and organising!

Once the wood chip group had completed their job they headed inside to the warmth of the main hall and gave a hand to those sorting and labelling the bags of uniform.

"What do you reckon, do I fit into this jacket?" - Speedy

Check out Alice, Sophie R, Zanoubia and Mary and Venny in the background, focused on sorting and folding!

"I feel like I've had the full GoodGym experience" - Sophie R

The sort end of the stick

Biscuits and Milla were given the challenge of the top-floor storage room which to begin with, which shall we say was a little unorganised. Trays and all kinds of items were everywhere! Milla even discovered a wonderfully crafted internal organ diagram. With some help from Emily, the storage room was now a place you could easily walk into, or in Biscuits' case, take 'Henry' the hoover for a quick spin around.

Check out the transformation!...

After forty minutes of lifting and shifting, organising and moving we called it a night once the final bag of school uniform was bagged up and labelled. There was just one last thing to do...have a team photo in Mrs. Nash's classroom! Much to the delight of many their were some fun coloured building blocks that were made into a lovely 'GG' prop.

With all the jobs completed and a team photo taken we said our goodbyes and thank yous to Matt and Emily, and headed back to base. Sadly, there was no time for a fitness session tonight, but we did manage to get in a few more 'squats' or 'spotty dogs' or as I conjured up 'squatty dogs' (now there's an idea!) on the run back. Once back at base we had a good stretch off back before heading home for warmth and food.

Top work tonight team! 😊

"You've all saved me many hours, if not days of walking back and forth, moving and sorting books which has been on my to do list since September 🙈" - Eloise

Next week we've got a new task up in White City for The Church of St Michael and St George. For all the details and to sign up, click here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!

31 GoodGymers ran 4km to help TRAID and The Masbro Centre

There was a real chill in the air tonight but this didn't stop a record-equalling 31 GoodGymers coming along to get fit and do good in their community on a special TWO-TASK TUESDAY!...with Chi briefly in attendance we did have a record, but sadly work called and in true Chi style he did his smooth disappearing act!

It was lovely to welcome Aine and Will along to their first H&F group run - hope you both enjoyed it!

Once gathered outside, we first congratulated this month's 'good deed machine', Helen on her 100th good deed and ensured she was dressed appropriately for the run...with her '100' wings of course! So much good done for the community, looking forward to seeing you repping your shiny new red GG tee with wings. Well done Helen! 💯🙌🥳 .

AND, apologies that I forgot until the end of the evening, well done to Mr ‘Speedy Jonzales’ Jonny Knight on his 50th parkrun! 5️⃣0️⃣🙌🏼.

I guess that's why they call it the news...

1. January Challenge 2020 - With 113 good deeds racked up so far we've officially beaten our 2019 good deed total of 107!! Great job team! 🥳 Will we beat the 1,627kms run/walked?! You check on H&F's progress in the GoodGym leagues here.
2. GoodGym H&F Starter Session - Saturday 25th January at 10am - Not just for those who are new to GoodGym! Please come along after Fulham Palace parkrun and lend a hand weeding the historical moat at Bishop's Park. Please click here for all the details and to sign up.
3. Up & Running 10k - Meet at Chiswick Bridge at 8.45am for a 9am start.
4. Ragnar Run - weekend of 19th September - 1 more person is needed for the 10 man team. Please speak to 'Speedy' for more information.

Following a quick-warm up which included high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and a fully mastered brain body warm-up combo with different moves for each number, the team split into two groups. With Helen completing all the poses for the 'gram both teams set off in the direction of Shepherd's Bush.

Task 1 - TRAID Shepherd's Bush

Catriona led 10 runners on a short run up to TRAID Shepherd's Bush. TRAID is a charity working to stop clothes from being thrown away - they believe clothes should be resused and recycled to reduce the environmental and social impacts of our clothes.

Hopefully this isn't too fabricated

Once inside, the team set about moving clothes from the clothing racks to boxes and stock the old display clothes into lots of cages 👕👚. Check out Lucy in action!

Some of the clothing was superbly modelled as they worked away, Matt with a cream dress (definitely your colour!) and Katie with the red trousers was a personal favourite!

With such efficient team working the job was completed, all that was left to do was to take a lovely team photo infront of the 'fully clothed' cages. TRAID's Store Manager was very impressed and thankful for the extra pairs of hands tonight. Good job team!

Task 2 - The Masbro Centre

The rest of the group headed up to the Masbro Centre, a slightly scenic way so as to get in those kms! With Tom and Alice neck-and-neck in the distance rankings for the month both were very amusingly at every opportunity trying to get in those extra few steps over the other.

Despite a slightly longer route, it wasn't long before we arrived at The Masbro Centre, which is the hub of all the Masbro Community Centres. Masbro offer a total community service from early years to older people – with arts and cultural events, sports and fitness classes, adult learning, help with gaining employment, and much more!

Sweep thrills

Tonight we had been tasked with giving the back garden, front garden and car park area a bit of a tidy-up of leaves, plants and weeds. Once we'd got some light, bin bags and a few tools the team gloved up and set to work. Helen set to work sweeping, and the rest of the team began some manual weeding and leaf collected. There was also a few bits of wood that needed a quick chop. Arba and Aine bravely held the wood, though turned away in fear as Biscuits began to chop with his shears. Thankfully, no fingers were lost, and no eyes harmed 😬.

With so many pairs of hands the back garden was completed within minutes, although Arba, head of quality control noticed one patch that had not been cleared of leaves up to standard. Once these leaves had been bagged the team walked through the wonderful inside of the Centre around the 5-a-side football pitch to the front garden and car park area.

Sweeping up appearances

Helen and Bev formed a powerful sweeping duo as Helen swept with the broom while Bev used the dustpan and brush to collect piles of leaves 🍁🍂. Cookie went deep into the depths of the garden area to weed and pull out the dead plants, while Luis and Rosie moved benches to ensure every inch of the car park was covered. Matt and Phoebe carefully nursed the rather split bin bag, continuing to fill it with the last few weeds.

We called it a night and with the other team arriving through the gates managed one big team photo around Helen and her wings. Tools returned we set off back to base with Cookie leading the way.

Drop it like it's squat!

Back at base, I decided to let Helen have the final say on tonight's fitness session....to be, or squat to be? The decision was one of the team's old favourites, 'Sally Squats'! 3mins 25seconds of squatting, what's not to love?! In what resembled a strange camp-like gathering, we formed a circle around 3 phones co-ordinated to start the song Flower by Moby at the same time. Everyone went very quiet as we all felt the burn! Top work team. Check out the song here if you'd like to get in some extra squat practice!

We finished with a stretch off and some well-deserved banana bread made by Helen, with bananas saved from the City Harvest Community Mission at the weekend. Absolutely delicious. Thanks Helen!

Next week we're heading to Eloise’s school, John Betts Primary to lend a hand with a whole range of INDOOR jobs! For all the details and to sign up, click here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!