On a sunny Sunday morning 7 GoodGymers, with the able assistance of Bonnie, Flo and Ed, turned up to encourage, cheer on and keep safe 70 young runners as they completed their 2km run. We marvelled at the very young speedy front runner who completed the course in just over 7 minutes, and the determination of many of the others to keep running however difficult they found it.

As it was GoodGym Colchester's 6th birthday today we felt it was only polite to have a celebratory ice cream/drink to finish off the morning.

Junior Park Run takes place every Sunday morning at the Old Heath rec. We will organise another GoodGym take over before long, but they are always grateful for individual volunteers if anyone is available to help out before then. See the link below for the volunteer roster and how to take part. [https://www.parkrun.org.uk/colchester-juniors/futureroster/]

What a stunning day to volunteer at a half marathon and support all the runners and their amazing and diverse reasons to run. It was a pleasure to support the Headway volunteers and the police cadets. The Goodgymers were stationed on East Hill around the three mile mark to encourage and cheer runners and to become amateur traffic police! We are a bit biased so the loudest cheers came for Louise, Emma and Dan!

Despite the event highlighting how (needlessly?) reliant people are on driving into our city centre, the runners looked happy, safe and quite pleased to be running downhill after the effort of North Hill and with the gradual Ipswich road incline ahead!

As I write WhatsApp is buzzing with news from end of the race...the volunteers and cheer squad went for a coffee and a cake and I hope the runners relax and recoup however they enjoy the most!

Well done everyone, you all managed the same distance, and well done to the organizers and volunteers for doing Colchester proud.

In the beautiful Spring sunshine money was collected, but not all was as it seemed. The original charity were no where to be seen, but Rotary were collecting for Ukraine, so I decided to help them for a couple of hours instead.

It was a beautiful sunny morning and perfect weather for a parkrun at Mersea Island. Six Colchester GoodGymers gathered at the starting line to take part in the alternative course (due to burrowing badger disruption!). A big well done to Frazer for doing his first ever parkrun!! It was also Jade and Phil's first time at Mersea, they both smashed it and were still smiling at the end. Louise and Tav provided excellent encouragement along with excellent running!

We headed to Mersea Barns for a well-deserved brunch joined by our lovely GoodGym partners and offspring. What a lovely start to the weekend!

Louise made it into the 100 good deeds club tonight on a night of great effort on the hill and at the allotment. If you are reading this and do not know the significance of completing 100 good deeds then this my take (feel free to comment what goodgym means to you all in the comments). When you think to yourself "I'd like to do something on a weekday evening" and then hear about this thing called Goodgym you may not have been able to imagine the friends you make, the fitness you gain and the warm fuzzy feeling you get. But you soon realise how worthwhile it is and you go back time after time...100 good deeds may be roughly 100 hours of volunteering and a lot of kilometers in the tank. That is what I call a huge impact. Add in all the other Goodgymers and each week we do tasks that make our partners so happy and save them so much time.

Tonight was one of those nights as we went to the allotment, gave some trees a haircut, potted many geraniums and cleared a large flowerbed.

Pam was very pleased and everyone got stuck and green fingered.

The fitness was a minimum of 6km and a swift hill sprint and helping Jade get ski season fit!

Enjoy the rest of your week!