An incredible 38 GoodGym'ers helped spread the word about GoodGym as they volunteered at Fulham Palace's 300th event!

Wow! What a HUGE GoodGym takeover! It's been months in the making and my word did Red Thunder deliver as 38 GoodGym'ers turned out to lend a hand at parkrun, while also promoting GoodGym! On the hottest day of the year so far, a sea of red t-shirts turned up to help with the pre-event set-up, pacing, timekeeping, token sorting, number checking, funnel managing, photographer, the lot! Most of the roles were filled by GoodGym'ers, and the RD was our very own Jonny, normally found RD'ing at Beckenham parkrun!

Today's Fulham Palace parkrun event was a special one, it was their big 300th event celebration!...although we'll forever remember it as the "big double zero". To mark the occasion some big blue balloons 3-0-0 were attached to the regular board asking for volunteers, unfortunately though the 3 balloon decided to take flight before the start of the run leaving the two 0 balloons behind. Not only was it the "big double zero" but it was also National Armed Forces Day. Their were half a dozen soldiers from The Royal Yeomanry, the senior reserve light cavalry regiment of the British Army at the parkrun to help out and promote both what they do, and the importance of the day.

Despite the slight hiccup of the 3 balloon and a few last minute alterations to the location of the finish funnel, everyone was ready to go, donning either the official yellow high viz jackets or their blue pacers bibs. With final pre-event preparations underway, Kate, Andrew and Jason got to work chalking up the best finish funnel masterpiece that Fulham Palace ever seen, check out the photos!

With all the volunteers in place, the runners gathered round for the briefing. Armed with a megaphone, Jonny began the briefing by first handing over to Hugo from The Royal Yeomanry before continuing on with his announcements and milestone shoutouts, and one shoutout for GoodGym!

Briefing complete it was time for the start! Due to Fulham FC's stand works the course has been temporaily changed, including the start position, which caught out the naughty runners who didn't attend the briefing. But thanks to a quick thinking, Johnny Wren, he managed to round-up the small group of runners waiting at the old start line just before the off! The timekeepers, Kate and Ana had assumed their positions with Jonny at the start line and with some perfect co-ordination of "Go" the stopwatches began and the runners set-off.

Those that weren't pacing cheered and clapped on all the runners as they came round to complete their first lap before taking up their positions. As the runners came round the complete their last lap of the course there were lots of red sweaty faces, but also lots of smiles! Due to the new course route being slightly shorter than the 5km many of the pacers came in earlier than they had anticipated and had therefore turned to running backwards towards the finish line, encouraging on the runners behind them that they had been pacing.

As the final parkrunner came in with tailwalker, Jason everyone lined the finish funnel to cheer and clap them in, what a lovely way to end! All that was left was the closedown, token sort and most importantly, enjoy the GoodGym cake made my Helen and the coffee and teas in the sun on the Fulham Palace lawn. Perfection! A job fantastically done by all.

Thank you so much to everyone for coming along, hope you had fun! Don't forget parkrun relies on volunteers to keep the events going so do try and volunteer when you can, and look out for other GoodGym parkrun takeovers in the future! Hope you have a lovely rest of your weekend.

23 GoodGym'ers ran 3km to help Springvale Residents Hall with a treat of a task - weeding, sweeping & window cleaning!

Everyone is loving the lighter and warmer evenings it seems as a massive 22 GoodGym'ers joined me in H&F to run and do good! Amongst all my wonderful regulars tonight, it was lovely to welcome along Katie and Suzie for their first H&F group run and many second and third timers back for more!

There was lots of running to celebrate from the weekend...Eloise got a parkrun PB at Gunnersbury, Johnny & Sarah ran the Morden (almost!) 10km, Catriona ("this is the last hill") led her first GoodGym long run up and down the rather undulating Wimbledon Common, AND the good deed machine of January aka Helen ran the London Marathon in a superb time and with a big smile on her face despite injury...stairs and walking sound like they have been a struggle since and Helen had a well deserved evening off tonight! Well done to you all!

Other news...

1. London Marathon Ballot 2020 - Feeling inspired to run a marathon? Well....the London Marathon ballot for 2020 is OPEN until Friday 3rd May, I'll just leave the link to enter here - there are also many other options such as Manchester, Brighton & nohtaraM ehT!
2. Fulham Palace parkrun GoodGym takeover - Saturday 29th June! - Our friends at Fulham Palace parkrun will celebrate their 300th parkrun event...and the best news is that GoodGym will be helping out with a BIG takeover event! - Sign up here please fill out the spreadsheet on the sign up page with your preferred volunteer role or pacing time.
3. Next Socials - save the dates! The next GoodGym 'all areas' social is on Thursday 9th May in Peckham & the next GoodGym H&F social is on Tuesday 14th May. Locations TBC, check the WhatsApp group for updates.

Having sailed through the hardest part of the evening, the name and number count, we completed a quick warm-up and set off on our short run to Springvale Residents Hall. Upon arrival we were greeted by the ever-smiley and enthusiastic Berni, chair of the Springvale Tenants' and Residents' Association and the Hall's gardener, Tom. Berni explained that the hall was going to be used for the upcoming elections at the end of May but needed a big spruce up as there were quite a number of weeds that had sprung up again, tougher and thicker than before!

Weed, sweep, clean, repeat

With the odd peeping resident from the adjacent flats (thankfully admiring all the GoodGym work that Berni had told them about, not gearing up to throw rotten tomaotes or eggs!) the group spread themselves around the hall and tackled the following jobs:

• Weeding of the overgrown garden at the rear
• Weeding and sweeping of the patio
• Weeding and sweeping down the side of the hall
• Cleaning the outside of the windows
• Removal of all the cobwebs on the outside of the hall

Heavy nettle

As always, the group got quickly stuck in to the jobs at hand and began pulling up all the weeds and nettles from the garden area and down the side of the hall at a rate of knots. As the weeders were forming piles of unwanted weeds, the window cleaners, with the assistance of the ladder, were thoroughly cleaning and wiping all the windows back to the former shiny glory.

Taking the biscuit 🍪...

Berni had very kindly left some biscuits and sweets for the group as a thank you, and to keep everyone fuelled throughout the task. Not one to miss a biscuit or food based snack, Johnny went in seek of them having, in his words "done some work to earn them first" and began serving up a 'sugar rush' with his refreshments partner, 'I've only had five biscuits' Alice to everyone in the group. The sugar hit break was very welcomed by all and everyone got stuck into their biscuit or sweet of choice with not one crumb left behind - though if there had been, the sweepers would have ensured a clean sweep of the area.

Transformation at the weed of light

Forty minutes flew by and the transformation was striking! As they say, pictures say a thousand words so...

Just a small snipped from the evening. Impressive work!

Papa-paparazzi

With Berni and I furiously snapping away with our phones, and the surprise late arrival of Chi armed with his professional camera, there was very little of the evening that wasn’t captured on film! 📸. About a thousand snaps and four group photos later, with no staging whatsoever, everyone’s best angles were captured. All that was left before we headed over to Brook Green for tonight's short fitness session was for us to say our thankyous and goodbyes to both Berni and Tom.

Totally ab hoc

Tonight's fitness centred very much on the core. First up was the closesly contested plank tennis ball relay 🎾, Team 1 came out on top, just!

And since we had Mr 'Abs on Tour' in our presence, everyone was also treated to a five minute abs blast which included bicycles, leg raises and heel taps, all while being papped by Chi of course. This was to the delight of Jonathan who was after that magic new Tinder profile picture, which I believe Chi managed to snap, and for which Lucy gave him the winning bio quote, team work in action.

As we said our thankyous and goodbyes to Chi, there was just time for part II of the new weekly feature by popular demand... the nostalgic and amusing 'Tom's CV' series told by the man himself. This evening's short anecdote was from his time working at Burger King, stay tuned for part III next week!

Plank you very much, that's ball folks!

All that was now left was a short run back to base and a quick stretch off. Great work tonight team!

Next week we’re heading back to Flora Gardens Primary to finish off the last of the painting in ‘The White House’. Sign up for next week’s run here. Have a fab week and long weekend!