16 Westminster GoodGymers ran 6k to One Big Family Homeless Charity in Victoria to help make food for the evenings soup kitchen and sort out a room full of clothing donations.

Awesome squad ready for speedy food preparing action in Westminster! With some very busy pavements this week we had to navigate some Central London back roads to make our way 3k South to the Ebury Estate and the One Big Family base.

With a hot food offering ready and waiting to feed Westminsters Homeless community we had a few less sandwiches to make than normal but had the added difficulty of cutting the bread buns into matching slices for easy chewing.

With a high quality sandwich production line churning out Ham, Jam and lemon curd (which caused some curdling controversy). 100 sandwiches cut, buttered, spread and bagged all ready for consumption in 30 minutes!!

Going 2 to a bag we dominated getting 400 pastries ready to give away in a speedy 15 minutes of action! Leaving time to sort out the clothes donation store cupboard. Starting as a huge clothes mountain, in 15 quick minutes we had men’s and women’s piles of jumpers, trousers as well As towels, hats and The biggest pants ever made!!

With everything ready for the One Big Family to feed Westminsters most vulnerable we zipped away picking up the pace on our 3k bounce back to New Balance.

Stretched and warm we made our way home with a job well done!!

Next week we will be heading out on our monthly loop to hand out food to Westminsters homeless community. This time we will be handing out hot cross buns if you would like to contribute a bag or two of hot cross buns please bring them along to the session they will be most appreciated!!

Have a great week,

Smooth Running

Joel

Last night 21 runners ran 3km to Cranbrook Community Centre to shift dirt, lay compost and clear fallen leaves and rubbish.

A big cheer for our 5 new runners last night - Rosie, Matt, Tim and Beth. We have done exceedingly well in the January challenge, particularly with regard to distance - as of this morning we've run 3591kms - solidly overshooting our target of 3100kms by quite a way. Good deeds wise we completed 142 out of our target 174. Never fear, next year we'll smash it!

After a 1.2km run down we were met by Janet at Cranbrook Community Centre who explained our tasks for the evening. We split into two groups - shifting soil/compost and clearing the garden area. We steamed through the task, filling 5 bags with leaves and dead plants, packing a huge bin with tree cut-backs and spread 1.5 bags of compost. A solid task well done! There's plenty more to get done at the Community Centre and we look forward to coming back in the future. We were particularly intrigued by the wormery in the allotment area. Worms just love kitchen waste. They turn it into beautiful soil - a perfect solution to kitchen waste for those without a garden!

We thanked Janet, took a selfie and headed for an easy lap of the centre, followed by a ‘medium’ lap and finishing with ‘hard’. Continuing to discover our paces and become more confident runners!

At the end of the last lap, a plank off was called for - everyone did a fantastic job ranging from a solid 40 seconds up to a stellar 3 minutes 10 seconds (see photo of our plank-off winners shaking hands). I anticipate some aching cores tomorrow...

We ran back the way home and finished with a good stretch and some deep belly breathing.

A great start to the week team, I look forward to seeing you next week!

Last night 19 GoodGymers ran 1.5k to clear up the garden on the Holly Bush Estate

GoodGym Tower Hamlet's old friends at Holly Bush estate needed help! They're applying to become part of the Royal Horticultural Society and desperately needed a tidy up in order to make the best impression. We met at the Town Hall Hotel as usual (this time in a room that had secret doors...!) at 18.45. After a briefing we celebrated Louise Hartley's 50th good deed.

Tower Hamlets are absolutely killing the distance in the January challenge - we've collectively run 2472 km this month! Our target is 3100... we can do this! On the Good Deed front we are a little behind schedule - 81 out of a target of 174. Personally, I think sharing the goodness 81 times in 23 days is pretty amazing anyhow!

It was fantastic to see some new faces last night - show Izzy, Usaid and Fiona some support!

Sally Squat Challenge

After some breath work we headed outside to warm up with hops, skips and frog jumps. Squats were mentioned during the briefing and a couple of people looked a little nervous... So, you need two things - 'Flower' by Moby and space to squat. The main lyrics are 'bring Sally up' and 'bring Sally down'. Guessed the rules yet? Squat down on 'bring Sally down' and come up on 'bring Sally up'. It's harder than it sounds! Give it a go at home and let me know how it goes.

Margaret at HollyBush was delighted to see us again

On well-warmed muscles we went just round the corner to the Rocky Garden at HollyBush Estate. Margaret was delighted to see us and we spent a good 35 minutes getting to work on the garden. We cleared several beds of weeds for her and did a cracking job of clearing up leaves ready for composting. Great work team!

After thanking Margaret and of course taking an obligatory selfie, Bryon guided us round the corner to a green where we did some speed play work - finding our 'easy', 'medium' and 'hard' pace.

An excellent start to the week Tower Hamlets, I hope to see you at our starter session on Wednesday and of course at the same time on Monday next week!