Throughout the day 13 GoodGymers came along to share their Saturday with visually impaired athletes competing at this years Metro Blind Sport Athletics Open.

Most of us had no previous experience of helping athletes with a visual impairment but everyone was really keen to get involved, to help and to learn.

A large contingent started their day with nearby Mile End parkrun before heading to Mile End Stadium to contribute to the morning session which was labeled as the 'Come and try' part of the day. This is where younger participants and those new to competing could come and have a go at new events they hadn't tried before. Led by the amazing Coach Chris, we learnt how to support visually impaired atheletes with track running and long jump events.

I had a great time and really enjoyed doing something so different and rewarding - Dharmesh, GoodGym Redbridge

Later accompanied by Tracey, superstar Jodie stayed for the whole day and continued to support through the main event. My highlight of our time there was when an urgent plea late in the day (for a runner who was able to run a sub 22 5000m!) saw Hayley head all the way across London to guide a runner to a championship qualifier. What a hero!

24th June - 30th June is #DeafblindAwarenessWeek and it was great to partner up with Metro Blind Sport to provide support for this event leading into this week's theme.

What a wonderful experience to be a part of!

'We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us'

Hear, hear! Last night's run was in partnership with The Great Get Together as are all of this week's GoodGym sessions across the country. It is an initiative founded by the family and friends of Jo Cox who was killed on 16 June 2016 and was created to reject divisive politics and bring our communities together and celebrate all that unites us.

Last night we used our run to celebrate kindness, respect and all we have in common! #moreincommon

16 of us were not put off the day's earlier biblical downpour and successfully dodged the rain for our evening run, we meandered through the parks to help The Ealing Transition Community Orchard tackle the brambles!

After collecting tools en route we wheelbarrowed our way to meet Grant who helps manage the garden and had a thorny issue for us to take on...

Getting to the root of the thorny issue...

Our instructions were clear, all brambles out, everything else in! So we quickly got to work snipping away the brambles in amongst the wildflowers as close to the root as possible to prevent them shooting up again too quickly. Some of us even went as far as pulling out the whole root entirely!

GoodGym 1 - 0 Brambles!

As the task is a lovely short run away we got lots snipping time this evening so after 40 minutes (and a few scratches!) the garden was a much less spikey place to be. We finished up by wheelbarrowing the tools back to the shed and stopping off in Walpole park for a round of sprints and squats. We had one group of power walkers and one group of sprinters, both equally hard at full effort! By the time we were done everyone was very out of breathe, great job all round!

With all that done and dusted we'd built up an appetite but with the earlier rain we called off our picnic and headed for a pubnic instead!.We all shared food, had some drinks and celebrated all we have in common. What a wonderful way to share an evening!

18 of us used our run last night to help St.Mellitus with their church garden

We had one new member with us too, well done to Jodie for joining us and getting stuck in last night!

Breaking news:

• Steph completed the RTTT marathon on Saturday and still made it to the group run last night, what a trooper! We had special guest Kate with us last night, she’s the fab new trainer for Trafford GoodGym which will be launching very soon.
• Next week we have a picnic after the run in honour of The Great Get Together, sign up here and make a note of what you’re going to bring to share with the group.
• Community mission this Saturday to help with St. Mary’s garden work day, get yourself signed up if you can make it.

On with the show...

After a great warm up led by Kate we weaved the back way round to St. Mellitus where Vicar Stu was ready to greet us with lots of tools to get the job done. The church garden is a lovely community space but needs a bit of TLC so while they are waiting on some much needed help from Ealing Council we stepped in to help give it a good trim and tidy up.

Not so slim pickings

We had one team on litter duty and the rest got stuck in with a good strip back of the overgrown shrubbery. Unfortunately the back of the garden attracts a lot of litter from passers by but by the time our litter picking (Charlie’s) angels were done it was looking lovely and clean once more!

Everyone else was given strict instructions to ‘go to town’ on the rest of the garden. Everything needed a good cut back and we certainly delivered filling up over 6 huge bags of garden waste.

With 18 of us on board just a quick half an hour blitz equates to a full days work for someone else!

A quick sweep up of all the trimmings and we were done, great work everyone! We headed back on a slightly different route to make a stop off in Walpole Park where the group were put through their paces with a quick HIIT workout to finish up for the evening.

See you all next time!