This event was a one off special for Imperial university student.

Emma, a warden in Falmouth halls had put together a term of Sunday night activities that all help to improve student’s mental and physical well being. She had ask goodgym to come and host a run for the students.

We had organised to help deliver flyers promoting the UK’a first recruitment centre for disadvantaged young people and adults. You can find more about them here.

We delivered around Chelsea Manor Peabody estate and Lawrence Street Peabody estate in Chelsea. This took us on a lovely 5km run past the V&A, around the streets of Chelsea and down to the river and back.

Flyering on the fly

With our task for the night cancelled just hours before we were due to meet for our regular group run, I had come up with a new good deed for the gang to help with. Thankfully a couple of our runners had helped out a local arts charity called Uthink for last two weekends with some painting and already had some leaflets from them for us to deliver. But this pile wasn’t going to be enough, so I arranged to pick up more on our run. And so the night unfolded as follows:

We started off our night with our usual welcome speech and an unusually vague “wait and see” briefing of our night’s task, (as I still wasn’t totally sure until we arrived at UThink). Following on from this we headed outside for a warmup and then headed off to pick up the flyers.

Once we arrived at Uthink’s gallery space on the corner of Winslow road we met Viv there a volunteer who’s been helping the charity organise their program of events. She gave us a little introduction about UThink and the H&F art festival they would soon be hosting. Our task for the evening was to deliver their flyers about the art classes they run and the art festival into local shops, cafes and pubs up the Fulham Palace road. So we did just that and also delivered some in the Hammersmith shopping centre too.

After losing people and finding them and then losing some more people and find them... we head off to the river for a bit more of a run and a fitness session.

Ring of exercises

This week’s fitness session was devised by the group. We all stood in a group and took turns picking the next exercise. It ended up including a lot of pressed-up related exercises (no-one can blame me tomorrow for achey arms).

At times on the run it felt like we’d barely run anywhere except around in circles but we actually clocked up 5.77km in the end. Thanks for sticking with it guys! #dogoodgetfit

3 Thorns Down - Hack and run

This week's run broke a record for the amount of new people along on my watch! They even out numbered the regulars. Welcome Rebecca, Anil, Athene, Jules, Emma & Claire.

Do the fox trot

We started off the night talking about the different ways to do Goodgym, our running total on the January Challenge and then the hilarity of multiple health and safety mitigations for our task including foxes, darkness, thorns and pot holes. After a head count took us to 13 people, we headed outside to do a dynamic warm up.

Welcome to the bramble scramble

Our task for the night was to revisit for a third time a garden in Fulham. The elderly residents at this council owned property were no longer able to handle the garden and as a result enormous brambles had taken over. We had been asked to help chop them back. Each time we’ve visited the gang have got a vast amount done in a short amount of time. Working really well as a team, swapping tools and taking turns holding the batlights for the others to see. Once our time slot was up, we grabbed a team photo and headed on our way.

Ian, the housing manager from the council, who had arranged for our visit said "we can't thank you enough for you effort and time. It's made a massive difference”.

Whistle workout

On the journey back we added an extra kilometre to the run by going by the river. Plus to warm us up and give our legs a good workout we played Indian file. Each time the whistle was blown, the runner at the back of the group had to speed up to the front and then set a comfortable pace.

Once back at base, we did some static stretches to cool down and had a reminder about the social after the following week's run.

Two tasks on this lovely summer evening in Islington.

One group popped up to Whittington Park. Aidan describes:

We arrived at Whittington Park after our longer run down Holloway Road. Our fortnightly task awaited us with Martin ready with bin bags and gloves.

The majority of us tackled the 1 o'clock club's garden as we need to keep up our good work of maintaining a weed and nettle free garden for the kids who use the club.

There was also the task of de-weeding the entrance of the main building, keeping it looking great for everyone!

After working hard for twenty minutes what better way to treat ourselves than with some circuits. Everyone got a chance to pick an exercise for everyone else to do whilst they went on a short lap of the field. Although some of the ladies did get a bit lost along the way! We had all the classics; press ups, sit-ups, planking and two types of squatting for good measure. All before rejoining Holloway Road for our run back.

Aidan

The other group travelled to Barnsbury Community Centre. We've spent a lot of time over the last year helping create a wonderful garden in the disused space behind the centre and we're now just putting the finishing touches to the project for their grand launch on 25th August.

First job was to get gloves out the storage cabinet. Simple, right? Nope. A combination of stupid rain and then stupid heat meant the combination lock for the cabinet had seized up completely. Despite the best efforts of Caroline, Patrick and a pair of pliers it remained stuck. Not to worry: we'd just have to be extra careful.

We spent 25 minutes carrying old pallets and broken bits of wood round to the estate's waste disposal site, having a thoroughly good weed and watering plants. Nice work.

Following the task we played "Dice of Doom" with Simon's new giant foam dice: everybody had a chance to throw the dice and determine the activity that had to be performed for 15 seconds. There were alternate squat thrusts, running high knees, start jumps (LOTS of start jumps), sprints, dreaded burpees (boo) and the elusive jogging on the spot. We then played a game that Caroline made up. Nobody was quite sure what it was.

Back at the pool we had a free stretch, a biscuit and voted on the proper way to eat scones: jam then cream, cream then jam, or Claire's suggestion, butter, jam then cream (which is apparently the traditional Cornish way of doing things)? Jam then cream won by quite a large margin. Some people were disgusted at this - especially Steve - but the people have spoken.

If anybody wants to make scones for next week maybe we could put it to the test.

xxx,
Simon