14 cheerful GoodGymers ran 6k to help One Big Family helping the homeless charity in Victoria.

A massively important evening of volunteering complete!! With 2 of the 4 volunteers from the charity unable to help with the evening’s food preparation and distribution GoodGym made a massive impact making all the sandwiches ready to be handed out to Westminster’s homeless.

With freezing temperatures Westminster’s most venerable needed that helping hand more than ever and was great to see a top group able to really impact.

A 3k run weaving South expertly lead by Rhys and Frances to One Big Family Victoria. Splitting into 3 groups we had the Vegetarian sandwich makes producing Cheese and falafel sandwiches. Which the Chicken sandwich production line was in full flow and the final group had the mission of moving 200 big books up 4 floors of stairs to be cataloged.

150 sandwiches made, bagged and packed. 200 booked lifted, shifted and stacked in 35 productive minutes!!

A swift 3k run back to base rounded off a fun filled December evening.

Thanks to Danny for the extra pictures!!

Hope to see next week for our Mince Pie Run and Social

Smooth Running

Joel

15 battle hardened Westminster GoodGymers battled the start of Winter by running 7k to Little Venice and start out canal path clear up!

** News** Do forget next week is the St Andrew Youth Club Games!! We will be battling in a range of activities with the oldest youth club in the world! We need you so please come along!

The GoodGym Christmas party is around the corner on the 1st of December in Burgess Park. Fun and frolics all round so come along!

With a need to get warm we started fast and got our blood pumping to our extremities! We powered our way 3.5km to Little Venice in the North West of the Borough.

It was our first trip with our partnership with the Canal and River trust to adopt a section of Canal path. We were fully stocked up with kit!! Grabbers, gloves, buckets and hand sanitiser on the ready in our new swish locked mini shed.

After a couple of key wriggles we were in, geared up and out picking to our hearts content!

Filling the buckets at a pace, finding the weird and wonderful that had been left on the Canal path. Super importantly keeping the bad stuff out of the water system!!

25 minutes of picking action yielded success and we filled every bucket before a quick tip out, tidy up and lock up.

Zipping back to Oxford Street we battled hard to maintain pace over a longer than our usual distance, great job with your running!!

A blast of warmth back at New Balance helped to thaw us out for our journeys home!

Thanks for coming along!!

See you next week

Smooth Running

Joel

Warning this run report may contain an excessive amount of puns!

Last night a wonderful 10 other GoodGym'ers came out to play (well technically run) and help out at the brilliant White City Adventure Playground. It was lovely to welcome along the E's of Elen and Emily for their first H&F group run - great to have you both along, hope you enjoyed it, you _played your cards right in choosing H&F!

Still Got the News

1. November Long Run (this Saturday!) - This month's GoodGym long run is the 'Southwark Circle' starting at 11am from Waterloo Station. Sign up here.
2. GoodGym London Christmas Party! (1st December). Hosted by GoodGym Southwark at the Old Library in Burgess Park. Fancy dress theme - the first letter of your GoodGym area - hoping to see some 'hammers', 'frogs', and other great H&F letter outfits there!...... £4 donation, lots of killer tunes and dodgy dancing! Sign up here. Please also bring along any sportswear donations you may have for Polly.
3. Charley is doing a 20km walk for GOSH in January 2019 and as part of her fundraising is 'knitting furiously on the tube' & selling personalised stockings for £3 each or two for £5 - please drop her a line if you'd like one or more!

And finally, well done to Catriona and the rest of the GG Raceteam for running against the elements (think sun, rain, hail) in the Cross Country at Welwyn City Garden at the weekend - the next Cross Country race is at Wormwood Scrubs on 1st December, to sign up, click here.

Name changer

While warming up in a perfectly formed circle we had a quick name and number count with some, naming no names (Andrew) 'mixing it up' and throwing me with the name of "Jake", easily thrown! With Stravas set we headed up on the 2.5km run up to White City, hoping for a nice quick run with the traffic lights, obviously this meant that there were more 'stops' than 'gos' but it allowed us to nicely regroup before we turned up the long and straight Hammersmith Grove. Once at the top of the road there was a brief pause due to the lights being against us again, but much to everyone's excitement we used this bonus time to fit in a 30 second wall-sit before continuing on our run up through the busy Uxbridge Road up towards White City. It wasn't long until we arrived at White City Adventure Playground, with a few bonus squats squeezed in!

A (play) day to adventure

We were greeted by the Deputy Manager, Koj who welcome us in and briefly explained to the group about the Play Association and the amazing projects and work they do - from delivering after school and holiday provision for local children aged 8 to 14 years, to specialising in providing play opportunities for disadvantaged children, and also teaching for children with complex special needs. This was proceeded by a quick tour of the Adventure Playground, a truly AWESOME playground that is a child's play haven!

All work, no child's play

Resisting the urge to have a play on the swings and slides, the group quickly set to work on clearing the small garden area that had become overgrown in the summer months, this garden area, once cleared will be transformed into a working garden for the children to use. Despite the small selection of tools, as Koj humourously commented "less may not be more" in this case - it transpired that he was a stand-up comedian so I asked what his puns repertoire was like, turns out pretty good, and we all had good fun bouncing puns around the entire evening, well we both got quite a few laughs from Charley so I'll take that!

Avoiding axecidents

Chris carefully wielded the axe as Tom, Jason and himself tackled the overgrown herbs in the center of the garden. Catherine and Emily worked on the bed behind while Andrew and Elen tackled the weeds and ivy growing up the side of the building, and Bex and Catriona got stuck into the bed near the garden entrance.

A mixed bag...of garden waste

With plants and weeds being cut down left right and center (quite literally) at a very fast rate it wasn't long before the bag of garden waste was overflowing and everyone was carefully balancing the final cuttings and waste onto the pile. Bex attempted one final sweep of the path with a large brush missing the handle much to the others bemusement, but it did the job perfectly.

Zip service

Following a couple of group photos around the very overflowing garden waste bag (in which Tom has a brilliantly placed floodlight behind him) and one in front of the play equipment, Koj dashed inside and re-appeared with the zip line swing.....

Policing fitness with Roxanne

With much fun had and a quick final slide before heading back indoors it was time for the part of the evening we all get excited about, fitness! Tonight's quick fitness session involved the song "Roxanne" by the Police. Following some nostalgia back to our freshers days at Uni tonight we were going to be doing some press-ups on "Roxanne" and some squat thrusts on "Red Light" while in the bridge position, or some squats on both. A tough 3 minutes, great effort all (including Koj who joined in the fun)!

All that was left was for us to say our goodbyes and run the 2.5km back to base. Barring a few quick stops en route with some bonus lunges, one-legged holds and wall-sits, as we'd quite rightly overdone the bonus squats for one night it wasn't long before we back and having a stretch and cool down after all our exertions of the night.

Thank you all for one very fun night, hope you have a lovely week! Next week, we have a slightly longer 7-8km run to Ray's Playhouse to help with some painting! We will have two pace groups so everyone can run at a pace thats comfortable for them. Sign up here. There will also be a post-run social! Hopefully see you there.