18 runners ran 3.5km to dig holes at Lettsom Gardens

News

• The next GoodGym Social will not be happening in Brent (my bad!) but somewhere TBC in Central London. It's happening next week on Thursday April 5th. There will be International Pun of The Month and much merry making. It's always a blast! Sign up here.

• Last night the unstoppable Helena ran her ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH good deed. Give her a big old cheer for that!

• SAVE THE DATE for GoodGym Olympics. It's happening on 30th June at Parliament Hill Athletics track. We have an egg and spoon race title to defend. We'll be having a flag party well in advance so get your thinking hats on. It's a wonderful day - there will be silly races and not so silly races and guaranteed hilarity. Sign up here.

• A big hello and welcome to Celia and Tom who joined us for the first time tonight!

And onto the good stuff... Last night 18 runners gathered whilst it was still light (thanks Deepak for the precision timing input) to run to Grove Park Allotments and Lettsom Gardens for a two-pronged task. We set off on the more scenic route and arrived 2km later happy as Larry.

Half of the group stayed at Grove Park Allotments and got busy weeding plots and scraping moss from the walkways whilst the other half went round the corner to Lettsom Gardens to start digging 70cmx70cm holes for sapplings that will be planted next week. Digging holes is no mean feat! Two groups worked on their holes with ground-looseners working up the turf and diggers making headway on the holes themselves. Those at Grove Park also had the chance to admire the new Bee Area that the group worked so hard at clearing. It's unrecognisable! Great work team!

After fifteen minutes the groups swapped around and after 35 minutes time was called and Liz came round to inspect the quality of our hole digging.

Holy Moly! 3 beautiful holes in 35 minutes!

A sterling effort made by everyone. Liz was delighted. She's very excited to have us back next week for a big task moving manure orders onto plots. It really will be a military precision exercise and we need as many hands on deck as possible. Sign up here.

We bid Liz farewell and headed back to base. Excellent work team and a great last task for Hanna who's come full circle - Grove Park was her first ever task!

See you next week! Lucy

For our first group run of the year 16 runners arrived at old spike, ready to get 2018 off to a really good start. While people signed in we chatted about the 10 things Rich had been advised to do on moving to London, one of which was come to GoodGym so he can already tick that one off the list. We also chatted about GoodGym’s January challenge and how Southwark is ready and willing to play our part in reaching an impressive number of good deeds and kilometres in January.

A last minute change of task meant that our journey there was as simple as walking through a door. The area behind the roastery is being converted into a community yoga studio so there’s lots of building work going on at the moment. Out the back there was quite a considerable pile of rubble that needed to be bagged up and moved round the corner, ready to be taken to the dump. With such an array of items in the pile it did bring back memories of a late nineties TV show but none of us really had the skills to make a functioning machine out of a lot of plaster board, hundreds of coffee cup lids, some discard chip paper and an old toilet. After half an hour or so we felt like we’d all had a good upper body work out and set off on our run. Half the group came with Tom and I to do a 3km circuit of Peckham Rye and half went with Matt on a slightly extended 5k.

What a year it's been. We've seen the group go from strength to strength, have helped countless charities and community organisations, covered many, many miles and had a pretty great time while we did it. We've seen the first ever 50 milestones reached in Hounslow, cheered our members through races and PBs and celebrated our first birthday. 2018 is shaping up to be a truly brilliant year.

Our last run of 2017 was a very festive one - not only were we feeling very Christmassy, but we also had Hanukkah to celebrate. Double the fun! So we jingled all the way outside to warm up, and to hear about each other's favourite points of 2017. Reaching 50 good deeds, joining GoodGym, traveling to exotic places and simply that it's almost over were our highlights.

'Borrowing' the lovely Ealing group's idea, our run to the task tonight was accompanied by a festive quiz, which included questions like how many good deeds have been done across the whole of GoodGym (73 112!) and who is top of the Hounslow leader board for good deeds (Remy and Andy). Each incorrect answer resulted in a fitness-based forfeit for the team, and there was one unfortunate moment when the roles were reversed and the questionmaster was punished with a mean old set of tricep dips. That wasn't supposed to happen!

We soon arrived at our task, which was to pick up and deliver a pile of leaflets for a community Christmas concert happening in Brentford. We're well practised at this particular job now, and so as soon as we got the leaflets in our chilly little hands, we set off into the local streets, stopping only for a quick snap in front of Brentford FC's home ground.

We still had a two mile run back ahead of us, so after we had had got rid of all the leaflets we set off in the direction of home. The drizzle started not long after, putting the future of our fitness session (the 12 days of Fitmas) in peril. By the time we got back to Turnham Green it was coming down pretty badly so we decided to do the festive thing, and head inside. A good job we did for two reasons. The first was that shortly after the heavens opened and the rain became apocalyptic, and the second was much much nicer. Thank you so much team for all the amazing words and treats - you are a brilliant bunch. We saw off the night drinking prosecco and toasting the year we've had, before retiring to the pub to spin the dreidel and eat the incredible spread of delicious things that Remy kindly brought us. It's been a wonderful year, and it's all down to the people that every week dedicate their time to make other people's lives better. That's you! Here's to 2018 xxx

There was so much good news last night, we barely knew where to start.

First all hail team (Tom) Cruisin' About, Doing Good for they reign supreme as winners of the inaugural Mission Possible. That's right, Remy, Andy and Michelle saw off all the competition to complete two great deeds and a whole scavenger hunt on Sunday. Way to do good! You should have seen their human pyramid.

We had some fabulous running as well as good doing this weekend, with Remy smashing her 24th and last half marathon of the year. Some of the Hounslow team were lucky enough to be there to watch her do it, and can confirm that she powered across the line in fine form. Well done Remy, a fantastic challenge completed. Will 'PB' Yates also showed us how it's done this weekend, with not one but two personal bests over 5k and 10k at the weekend. Fantastic stuff, keep it up!

Yes, we were unprepared for some of the biggest news of the night, but that did not stop us being massively impressed by none other than the gorgeous Vix who casually rocked up for her 100th milestone. You total superstar! 100 good deeds is an incredible achievement and shows huge dedication to making other people's lives better. Give that lady a cheer, she deserves it!

Our task last night was a slightly different one, but we did our warm up as usual, finding out at the same time what the best winter drinks were. Peppermint mochas, black forest gateaux lattes, Baileys, mulled cider, mulled gin, mulled wine (anything mulled) and Harvey Wallbangers were all top of the winter pops.

We then ran around the corner to the library to pick up two huge sheets of aluminium which are going to make up the beautiful new mural under Turnham Green Bridge - the very bridge we had scrubbed free of graffiti a few weeks ago. We divided up into two teams, and after a very thorough health and safety briefing plus demonstration (ahem), we set off down the road to deliver the new artwork ready to be displayed in local schools.

Past the beautiful Christmas lights we went, under the underpass and along the A4, attracting a few odd looks as we went on our merry way. Precious cargo deposited, it was only a short run back to Turnham Green, doing some extra and unexpected good on the roads along the way. It took until this point in the run to discover that Andy had spent the day hobnobbing with royalty, having a very interesting discussion about chip fat with Prince Charles. WHAT! Two crowns in a matter of days, Andy, you are so regal.

After a short run we had plenty of time to do a lovely fitness session, which started with a game of Chase the Hare. Remy was our sprinting hare, just pipped to the post by Andy and Will. After that warm up we launched into everybody's favourite test of speed, the bleeping Bleep Test. This is a really hard but effective exercise, and great for speed and endurance building. If that wasn't enough, we finished off the evening with some conditioning exercises to build up strength to support all that lovely running we're doing. After that, it truly was job done, and we finished with some stretches and a chat about next week's task. Well done everybody, a task well done and a tough session to boot. Same again next week?!.