With Wimbledon and the World Cup over, last night saw us back in the game with 20 runners coming out to help with some clearing tasks down on the waterway with The Canal & River Trust

We had 2 brand new runners, Callum and Jade who both did a great job on thier first GoodGym outing. Jade had never run before so it was really impressive to join us on one of our longer commutes of nearly 4 miles in total!

We were also joined by new trainer Manjit who is starting GoodGym Slough on 30th July! You can sign up to the launch here or join them any Monday from then on, it’s just one train away from Ealing Broadway so us westerners can get there very easily for a bit of GoodGym tourism!

Lots of notable runs last night

• Justin visited us all the way from GoodGym Newham and has now toured in 10 different areas
• Larissa is half way to the black tee club and completed her 25th good deed
• Lauriane went to double digits with good deed number 10
• And finally I’m on number 69…

With lots of new faces we started with a group whip around to get to know everyone and this week’s question was ‘What’s your go to running shoe and where do you buy it?’. Marlene is on the hunt for some new kicks so we opened the floor to give her some ideas.

And with that we were off, a jog down to Walpole and along the top with some warm up drills before a lovely run in the warm evening sunshine, the glow as we came through our final stretch in Elthorne Park was beautiful! There we met Jack who was ready for us preped with a range of tools to smarten up the canal including our new super long litter pickers! We split into groups of snippers and pickers with a few of the group heading off to a known problem area down by the lock.

Everyone worked really hard in the short time we had clearning the towpath and approach to the water of overgrowth and litter, it’s such a shame that there’s so much everytime we go but I like that we can go down and make such a difference in a short space of time.

With that we headed back to base for a few stretches and a recap, remember we have a great free fitness session happening at Bodyline on Thursday and it’s open to all GoodGym members so don’t miss out and sign up now!

Such a great turn out of 16 runners last night when we went down to St. Mary's Church to help them get on top of some garden maintenance. We also had two runners join us for the first time, welcome to Rachel & Charlotte!

It was a beautiful evening for a run so after a few warm up drills and a whip round of favourite animals (Tash's favourite is a finger monkey, if you need a cute pick me up search google images now!) we went off on a slightly longer route around Ealing Common.

Upon arrival we were met by three church volunteers, Angela, Alex and Jan, who gave us the low down on what needed to be done. The church has a beautiful large outdoor space but as it's all looked after by volunteers they were struggling to get on top of it. The main task was to start to clear part of the garden used to spread ashes which had been overrun by sticky weeds and nettles.

GoodGym to the rescue!

With so many helping hands we covered (or more like uncovered!) a lot of ground and by the end of our time there we had a massive pile of weeds to show for it! They were so happy with our help and we are definitely looking to make this a regular task, it was a delight to be able to provide some much need (wo)man power!

We made the most of the lovely evening sunshine by heading to nearby Walpole Park for a few running games and a round of triathlon core exercises before wrapping up the evening with a jog back to our base at Bodyline Studios who continue to be a great support to what we do every week.

Thank you to everyone for coming out, long may the weather continue as we have lots of great outdoor tasks coming up over the next few weeks, click here to see what we have planned and sign up nice and early now!

Last night we headed back to a firm favourite charity of ours The Log Cabin! 12 of us met up on a breezy evening to run the 5km round trip to help tidy up the playground and start our ongoing project of building a bug house for their fantastic outdoor space.

We split ourselves into two groups, a clean up team focusing on sweeping, raking the bark and weeding and a bug house team who were tasked with sourcing materials from around the site to start the makings of a wonderful home for wildlife!

Daniel, our contact from the charity had asked us to gather what we could on this visit so that we could build on it every time we come and source extra materials in between. It'll take a few trips over the spring/summer to complete but last night we made a great start on building a fantastic structure!

The fitness session this week was the first of what will be a regular GoodGym Ealing Mile series!

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.

Once you've got a time for the route you've got something to aim for each time you complete it so last night the group set their benchmarks and it's something we'll aim to do every month throughout the spring and summer!

Here are the times everyone set last night, massive well done to all and thank you to Mollie who helped me marshall to ensure no getting lost!

Chris 6:17

Micheal 6:38

Tash 6:44

Sam 6:50

Lauriane 6:52

John 7:02

Charlotte 7:57

Suganthinie 9:33

Jenni 9:39

Larissa 9:41

Next week is the first Tuesday of the month so we'll have our social after the run and if the weather is nice there's talk of icecream, see you all then!

It was a mild evening in Ealing last night, perfect for a run and spot of gardening at DIG for Cultivate London.

We started with a group introduction welcoming two new runners into the fold with Sinead and Charlotte joining us for their first GoodGym run. Big welcome, you both did a great job!

50 TODAY!

We also had another reason to celebrate tonight with Michael C completing his 50th good deed and earning his black ninja t-shirt! Over the past year Michael has been a regular in Ealing as well as visiting a few other areas and starting his mission running. He always volunteers to back mark as part of the taskforce and is also great a encouraging people to come to parkrun outside of of Tuesday session. We're very happy to have him as part of the Ealing crew and look forward to having him on the next 50 tasks to get his t-shirt with wings!

After a quick sweep on favourite ice-cream flavours (chocolate and banana got a few mentions) we were off and started with a little warm up jog down to the park before working in file formation on some sprint work. Last week we did a test run of this but went a little too fast, this week I think we nailed it!

We arrived at the site and were met by Rosie who had a large pitch for us to de-weed and turn over to get ready for a whole new crop to be planted in. She also had some planting for us to complete in another section of the garden so lots for everyone to get stuck into!

diggity, some doubt...

After initial confusion of 'surely this isn't all weeds, we can't be taking it all out?!' it was confirmed it was and we had permission to go to town on the plot and everyone grabbed a fork and started digging away! Everyone said what a hard workout the job was which is an added bonus on these types of tasks but I think one of the hardest things about last night was getting the full wheelbarrows on weeds into the compost heap, the slope proved tricky to maneuver and required a few of us get it up an over!

I don't think any of us wanted to leave but after half an hour of tough digging it was time time to call it a night, but don't worry it won't go unfinished as we'll back back next week to pick up were we left off!