Meanwhile in Westminster 21 brave brave, oh so brave souls headed deeeeeeeeeep into the darkest depths of North West London aka Queens Park in search of The Avenues Youth Centre where a magical room full of paint and brushes awaited. Why? We were going to paint a room a beautiful shade of white ;-).

Now with a large contingent joining us from Imperial college an extra special elongated briefing was needed about the wonderfulness of goodgym, its history and of course the risks of running on the road.

With that in mind we set off as one but slowly broke up into 3 pace groups, one managed by myself, one by the ever helpful, ever wonderful Lucy and finally one by the Imperial college team.

Now for those of you that are blissfully unaware The Avenues Youth Centre is somewhat of a TREK from where we are BUT we do not let this deter us. With Oysters in our hands just in case, we make it work. 5.5k there and of course 5.5k back BUT we break that up so people can either jump on a bus back or run half way back and jump on a train.

Now we have got the logistics out of the way we may now discuss the joy that painting brought to our hearts.

On arrival we were greeted by the ever friendly Jo who would show us to the tools that were needed for the job. With a quick scramble to find something sharp to open the paint with we were on our way. 20 mins to get the paint out, open it up, distribute it, paint, tidy up and soak the brushes lol.

Did it happen? of course it did with a little help from the paint fairies we got a majority of it done BUT as with all tasks there will always be more for us to do so a small contingent will return on saturday to finish one of the walls and finish getting rid of some paint. YOU could be part of that contingent. KEEN? of course you are.

Now we waved goodbye to 3 quarters of the team and a few of the faster ones stayed behind to try and get allllllllll the paint out of those hard to reach spots then somehow managed to chase down the main pack of runners arriving seeeeeemlessly with in minutes of eachother, another team arrived by bus, another arrived by train.

Now as far as i am concerned THIS IS TEAMWORK.

Thank you all for coming and of course for working both on the road and in the Avenues.

On a wet n windy blustery night we Goodgymers head south to the Salvation Army bearing gifts of food and clothing.

A bag full of clothes was strategically placed in the middle of the room and even before the briefing I suggested people picked what they felt would be easiest to carry. Socks, jackets, jumpers, tee shirts, leggings, the lot.

With 8 newbies and 10 regulars smiling and raring to go I explained why what we would be doing was so important and also what else they could get involved with if they so wished. Missions, pairing, races and on the odd occasion some fooding and drinking.

We headed out and decided to take the short cut as the wind had started to make itself known but with lots of chat the two miles flew by in no time at all.

We arrived safely and left all the supplies on the table and waited for our host to begin telling us all about how the Salvation Army works. It houses men only and only takes referrals and no walk ins. They have space for 109 people and mostly work with over 50s at that location. The Salvation Army helps people find work as well as preparing those who walk through their doors for life after homelessness.

With a q and a that lasted over 15 minutes as always we must thanks Anthony, Chris, Joe and the rest of the team for their time.

We said our goodbyes, a head back at pace to GG HQ, obviously no GG Westminster run is complete with out some hill sprints, intervals and lots of smiles.

Thanks for coming, hopefully we'll see you alllllll next week...

On a beautiful evening in Westminster we decided to take on yet another long run deep into the North of the borough to see our friends at The Avenues Youth Centre.

Our task? To give a room a deep clean in preparation for our return in two weeks where we will be giving it a fresh lick of paint.

A quick briefing about the task at hand, a bit of health and safety and of course a promise to everyone that we would get them back safe.

Now some may be intimidated by the distance of an 11k round trip so ONLY on evenings like this we take our oysters with us and some jump on the train when they feel they have done as much as they can.

We left the uni and headed down to the Avenues at a steady pace all arriving safely, smiling and wishing the sun would come out so we didnt have to wear tights and padded jackets lol...

We were greeted by Marcus and Carol who told us all about the centre and how much they appreciated what we do and we were off.

Jay clothes and special spray at the ready. Walls, wiped and washed, floor swept, skirting boards spotless, windows shining and all was well.

A few sips of water, a goodbye and we were thanked for allllll our wonderful work and we were offfffffff.

We broke into two groups, one running back to base and the other running half way and guess what the plan was? to arrive back at exactly the same time....

Did we? hmmmmmmmmm, maybe ;-)

Thanks for coming, hopefully see you allllll next week...