Hot to trot!

Last not proved too hot to handle for some as we had a very small but super efficient group of 6 runners out to plog and deliver invitations for St. Peter's Church parish party.

A big shout out to Marline (one of our newer GoodGym members, head over to her page and give her some support!) for still coming along despite giving blood for the first time that morning!

No warm up needed last night for the hottest night of the year so far, so after meeting Moira from the church to collect the invitations and decide on the streets to target we split into three pairs and headed straight off! In each team we had our brand new plogging (thats a mix of litter picking and jogging!) equipment kindly donated to our Ealing group by The William Hobbayne Charity. We had fancy litter pickers and handihoops to clean the streets as we went along delivering stacks of invitations to the streets surrounding the church.

6 turned out to be the magic number as we worked together for a clean sweep of three of Ealing's longest (and hilliest!) roads.

After collecting a surprising amount of litter and smashing our flyering task we reconvened at our agreed meeting point it was then time for the #GGOlympics2018 1km time trail! Marline was a superstar and waited with the equipment and bags while the rest of us sped down Park View Road to try our best to get on the leaderboard as part of this weekend's GoodGym Olympics. If you can't make it down you can take part by timing yourself on a 1km run anytime up until Thursday 28th June, click here for all the details!.

Chris led the pack with Carlos following closly behind, then it was myself and Michael hot on my tail with Jenni coming in strong to finish! Just a little jog back to the green to dispose of our rubbish collections and the group thought we were done, ha no chance! A round of Sally Squats awaited with Carlos feeling strong enough to try the push up version!

Great work everyone! Hope to see lots of you next week when we'll be giving back to The William Hobbayne Charity to say thank you for our wonderful new equipment! AND heading to the pub for our monthly social. I've heard there may also be birthday cake...

3 brand new GoodGymers joined 11 old timers last night to help at Ealing Foodbank!

A big welcome to Tom, Rachel and Marline who all joined the ranks of amazing last night by using their evening to run and help in their community for the first time.

With so many new faces we kicked off proceedings by getting the know each other a bit better, we love a 'what's your favourite...' question and this week we went with smoothies. The group are obviously still on a health kick after last weeks legumes discussion! We had everything from peanut butter and almond (ummm....hello!) to spinach which was met with disgust from a few members of the group but each to their own!

We then headed off en route to Ealing Foodbank starting with a few file sprint drills through the park to kick the legs into gear before continuing on the rest of our run where Hillary from the resource was eagerly awaiting our arrival! She had a mix of tasks for us to do including some sorting and cleaning in the warehouse and then a hell of a lot of weeding in the outside area. Instructions were to go to town and get right down to the roots on those nasty weeds!

No time wasting last night as everyone sprung into action across the site to tick off all the jobs!

40 minutes went by and as if by magic (and a huge amount of (wo)man power) the site was looking spick and span which left us enough time for a the run back AND a lovely partner core workout in Wapole Park, it's official GoodGym gets you summer bod ready!

ABSolutlely fabulous!

Such a great run last night, thank you all for coming and I hope we'll see all the new faces again very soon!

11 runners formed a well oiled machine last night in Ealing as we took on trimming and Transition Community Orchard, The Ealing Mile AND an abs blast workout, gosh I tired just thinking about it all!

A big welcome last night to Erika who joined us at GoodGym for the first time and also to tourists Hannah and Chi visiting Ealing GoodGym from Wandsworth and Haringey!

With lots of new faces in the group we got things started by getting to know everyone a little better and in honour of our task (where on previous visits we've been given magic beans to take away and grow) we decided this week to discuss out favourite legumes, a bit random even by my standards! We had everything from the humble chickpea through to the baked bean as well as a few confused 'what the hell is a legume?!' answers, now I'll know you all by your favourite pulses!

Raising Pulses

With the pulses raised verbally it was time to raise some physical pulses with a quick jog down to Wapole Park for a warm up round of squat, squat, goose. Think duck, duck, goose but with added squats and sprints and you've got the gist of it! Then a quick stop off to retrieve the tools needed for the job before a final wheelbarrow jog down to The Transition Garden where Grant was ready waiting for us with a couple of big trimming jobs in mind.

We had two mains jobs to tackle last night, taming the hedge surrounding the site and the ongoing task of keeping the brambles inside the wild area under control. Everyone quickly grabbed their weapon of choice and got snipping! The hedge received a much needed hair cut and we cleared a good few wheel barrows worth of brambles from the wild area too. Great work everyone! Transition is such a lovely local project and a big thank you to Grant for coming down to meet us last night, I'm sure we will be back again soon to help some more!

Just One Mile...

With the task behind us it was onto Lammas Park for the second installment of The Ealing Mile. Throughout the lighter months our Tuesday night routes often take us around Lammas Park which is the home of The Ealing Mile and within the park there are 100m markers to mark out the distance. It's a great place to do intervals and the mile is a fantastic opportunity to test your fitness. Here are the results from last night:

Chris 5:52

Chi 6:11

Lauriane 6:41

Michael 7:37

Carlos 7:40

Beth 7:41

Jenni 8:32

Amanda 8:34

Erika 10:19

Hannah 10:21

Well done to Chris who took 25 seconds of his last attempt, Lauriane who shaved off 11 seconds and Jenni who came in over a minute faster! We'll get in a couple more attempts before summer is out so keep your eyes peeled on the future tasks!

With the mile done and dusted you'd think we were spent for the evening but as part of his tourism Chi likes to treat his chosen group to an abs blast workout, who was I to argue?! We dropped off the tools and hit the floor for grueling round of core exercises before a final jog back to the start.

What a night!