I had the pleasure of leading the wonderful GoodGym Hammersmith and Fulham last night and they didn't let me down.

Seventeen wonderful runners joined me on a warm and sunny last evening of July. This week we were helping Acknowledging Youth (AY) a charity that works to help disadvantaged young people attaining employment by providing support and also formal clothes for interviews to younger people.

Tonight the task was to deliver leaflets for AY. We had two sets of leaflets - one for shops that would hopefully donate clothes to the scheme and one for local residents to donate their time to scheme. We split into two groups with Jason (team One) leading one and myself and Will (team Two) leading the other - to add a bit of fun to the proceedings we also had a scavenger hunt, which proved a good plan as we found that we delivered all the leaflets in no time!

Shoo the chickens

After a quick intro outside the leisure centre, and after the advice of some of the regulars a warm up around the corner, featuring some of Polly's favourites (shoo those chickens!) we split up and were on our way!

GG-ers in a phonebox

Jason's group headed doing King Street and then worked their way up (the orange area on the map) and myself and Will headed up Shepherd's Bush Road before splitting up and taking on some of the more residential roads (in the green area). As alluded to before both teams were very quickly out of leaflets and so it was all about the scavenger hunt.

Yellow car

We worked our way around the streets looking for the elusive yellow car in team Two but we managed to tick everything off the lists and as we were making our way back to base we converged on team One and ran back together.

We cooled down and did our stretches outside the fitness centre, said adjö to Anders whose last run it was before heading back to Sweden and chatted socials (H+F is next Tues, GG-wide is next Thurs).

And the winner is... Team One!

Jason and team One won by one point by fitting one extra person into that phonebox! Well done.

As always a pleasure leading you guys, Beth is back next week, sign up to the run here.

Cheers, Pritesh

What a night to finish on! We had a record breaking 29 runners turn up for the run and a bumper packed night of fun.

It was my last night as trainer of Hammersmith & Fulham Goodgym and our had task cancelled, so I organised a giant fitness session in the from of kids and party games.

Before we left for our session, we congratulated Ellie on reaching 49 Good Deeds. Next week, will be her 50th good deed - bagging her a snazzy black t-shirt. Go Ellie!

After the welcome round up we headed outside for a warm up next to the bike lane, making sure to include shooing the chickens one last time! Then we ran to Ravenscourt Park. This was an easy 1.4km, so we did a lap of the park on arrival. Here we pick up some late arrivals and had a surprise appearance from Pritesh (the Brent trainer).

Let the Games commence

First up on the games night, was my favourite - Stuck in the Mud. All the runners with names beginning with A were ‘it’. Runner could only release other runners from the mud by doing three squat jumps together. Can you see Chi and Jason hiding in the photos?

Foot Loose

Next up, a new version of Musical Statues. The runners had to run on the spot whilst Footloose played. Once the music stopped the runners had to balance on one leg. If you toppled over, your out. Over half the group made it all the way through the song!

Technique Time

Game number three was the technique relay. Each leg of the relay was made up of different running technique drills. See photos for winners picture.

Extreme Duck Duck Goose

Same rules as usual, but the ducks had to do strengthening exercises whilst waiting to be “goose”.

Get good at stealing

Next, a running drill called “raid the goal”. Each team had a nest of Haribo. The aim was to steal Haribo from the opposite teams nest to add to their own.

Abs-olute workout

Our last game was also an ab workout. We played Pass the Parcel whilst doing ab exercises and listening to the Top Gun soundtrack. After everyone had recovered we grabbed a great group shot in the park and headed back to base via the river. Then it was on to Wagamama’s for dinner.

Thanks to all the amazing effort put in last night and for the last year and a bit of my time with H&F.

H&F runners rock and I will miss you all. Keep up the fantastic work.

Happy running xxxx

There was a nervous atmosphere as we assembled for our weekly group run. England’s match had clashed with our group run time slot. To keep the football lovers informed, Tom had the highlights showing on his phone through the see-through window in his arm band and Bex had notifications on her phone.

After that hubbub was calmed, we celebrated the highlights of H&F’s achievements at the Goodgym Olympics. Firstly, H&F came 3rd overall out of 18 in our category (Hunter-Sidhu Shield). Which is an amazing achievement as we only had 7 people entered.

• Catriona came 2nd in the 100m Women's race - 14:09 secs
• Andrew and Alice came 2nd in the three-legged race
• We won the 4x100m relay and Goodgym Relay!

What a result!

The other bit of news was we’re going for dinner at Wagamama after my last run next week. If you fancy joining us for some grub, RSVP here.

So our task for the evening was to put up posters in shops near Hammersmith tube. This was to promote Fulham Good Neighbours’s Parson’s Green Fair on 7th July. We also, used the opportunity to hand out flyers about Acknowledging Youths - a social enterprise recruitment agency for disadvantaged youths and adults.

Tom lead the poster team down Hammersmith high street and managed to have better success that last week. Justine and Catriona each lead a group handing out flyers at Hammersmith shopping centre. I think it was a relief to the flyering teams when 7.35pm came around as they’d found it pretty hard work trying to give away the flyers.

By 7.40pm all the teams gathered at St Peter’s Church to warm up and go for a nice run. From here we came out passed the Apollo and down to Hammersmith Bridge. From the bridge we turned left down the towpath. After 1.5km we stopped for an out and back exercise.

Splitting the group into two, both groups had to run our and back for a set amount of time. The time went down and up. We did this as a pyramid:

• 30 seconds in 3rd gear (brisk jogging out) and then 30 secs in 4th gear (running now, hard to talk) back.
• 20 seconds - out in 4th gear, back in 5th (sprinting)
• 10 seconds - Same
• 20 second - same
• 30 seconds - out in 3rd, back in 4th

Once everyone had got their breath back after this exercise, we stopped a passer by to take a nice group photo by the river. It was from here that the football manic kicked back in as we ran back to base. We could hear the cheers from people in pubs over the river - cue frantically looking at phones. England had scored. Then again on the bridge cheers erupted once again and vans were honking.

After we arrived back at the gym we went through a cool down stretches and then the runners scattered to watch the last of the match. It’s clear from our WhatsApp group we had a lots of our runners watching the match.

Until next week, happy running.

Well on June 30th 2018 many things were happening it was National Paddy Day of Nepal, Edmonton Royals beat Toronto Nationals by 8 wickets in the 20Twenty and the Nation sat down to watch Nick Knowles hosts the quiz for people who can't resist a list in another cracking episode of Who Dares Wins. Meanwhile in leafy Hampstead Heath Park dog walkers, parents and local residents were making reports of strange behaviour, incidents included lots of cheering, signs of red thunder, folks running with eggs on spoons and a sea of flags. Not only was the behaviour incredibly positive they were also plying spectators with these delicious homemade cakes, what these folks were witnessing was Olympic fever GoodGym style. So as reported, June 30th 2018 was the 2nd ever GoodGym Olympics. The day brought together 24 different GoodGym area, ranging from Lambeth, the South West to Colchester. The events on offer were a range of events varied from the egg and spoon, 400m to the elimination race. The events were varied but the competition was not and every race brought a bigger and bigger sea of cheers, particular highlights for me was the epic finish of the elimination mile between George Bright and Richard Dowling, Folks flipping pancakes, listening to our two wonderful commentators, the GoodGym relay madness, and human tunnel finish that welcomed the final 5,000m runners brought a tear to my eye that did. Not only were the runners being judged but we also had a torch parade before to show off each boroughs creative sides and although it was a fierce competition. All in all there were 18 different events which each borough their own brilliant moments. This year to even the field I placed the areas in two different leagues due to levels of runners from each area. So up for grabs was the Hunter-Sidhu Shield and the Kerry-Barnard Cup named after our two fantastic commentators, John Hunter and James Kerry-Barnard.

I could write about this for hours however I think picture would do a far better so I will leave some of Tom Hunters and Sarah Rajabalee fanatic shots up and will post a link to more when they come available.

These events don’t work without a band of helpers and I have to say a massive thanks to all the all members of taskforce and GoodGym who have gave up their time to volunteer, help time and marshal on the day and general mean that I didn’t have to do too much, it was amazing there are just too many of you to write down but again thank you it was really a truly lovely and special day, thank you all and here’s to next year. If you have any feedback please let me know on tomb@goodgym.org. I will be putting together a committee of people to help out and organise next years, if you would like to be considered please drop me a email too.

Nice one, Tom

Race Results please click here on the link below. Please note we did not record heat times and some events do not have times or positions as these got put away during the tidy up. Please accept my apologies if this affects you.

Here are the rest of the results we https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WR3tnGIEXq6ylA-JhZEduRuGKiW5SgD4alhfHJqJFWY/edit#gid=0

Here were the final results

Kerry-Barnard Cup

AREA	PLACE
Lambeth	1st
Wandsworth	2nd
Camden	3rd
Hackney	4th
Lewisham	5th
Islington	6th

Hunter-Sidhu Shield

AREA	PLACE
Greenwich	1st
Brighton	2nd
Hammersmith and Fulham	3rd
Colchester	4th
Southwark	5th
Barnet	6th
Hounslow	7th
Tower Hamlets	8th
Haringey	9th
Croydon	10th
Bristol	11th
Brent	12th
Newham	13th
King's College London	14th
Redbridge	15th
Westminster	16th
Waltham Forest	17th
Ealing	18th

Torch winners: Big shout out to team Islington for their Stella effort combining biscuits with a fantastic touch. Highly commended goes to Tower Hamlets, Bath and Brent. Well done everyone.

This week 19 runners ran much further than 1km and all deserve a medal.

With the eagerly anticipated Goodgym Olympics only 3.5 days away, it dominated the weekly news briefing and some of the night’s agenda. 7 runners from H&F are signed up for represent our area at the weekend. And on this group run we were all going to give the Goodgym 1km Time Trial a go (more on that later).

After the news and task briefing, we headed off on the 3km run towards Fulham Broadway Tube station. Here we met with Chris from Fulham Good Neighbours, who’d asked us to hand out leaflets and pin up posters in shops nearby to promote Parson’s Green Fair on 7th July. We we’re also handing out leaflets at the same time for Acknowledging Youths - a recruitment organisation for disadvantaged youths and adults.

This task took some bravery from the Goodgymers, getting them to hand out leaflets to passersby and chat to the public about the two organisations and others asking shops to have the poster up in the shop. With a good chunk of leaflets handed out and posters put up, we grabbed a school photo outside the tube station and then headed off to Lille Rec.

Once at Lillie Rec we got ready to do the Goodgym 1km Time trial. This is an element of the Olympics open to all Goodgymers and could win you a medal. All the runners had to do was run 1km and upload the run to Strava with the hashtag #GGOlympics2018. Two laps around the park took us to 1.09km so the results below would be a bit faster for the actually 1km. The results I have are below:

Sarah W - 4.58 Catriona - 4.33 Tom C - 4.50 Chi - 4.11 Ellie - 5.40 Polly - 4.29 Meteki - 4.28 Johnny - 4.54 Catherine - 5.18 Helena - 5.38 Luis 4.00

Well done everybody!

20 wonderful running fans turned up to DO GOOD and GET FIT - running 5.4km in total.

The summer evenings are bringing us bigger numbers lately and on this occasion 4 brand new to GoodGym runners. Welcome Catherine, Leanne, Jade & Lorna - plus Kerri joined us from Newham. We started our night off gathered in the Better gym to chat over the night’s task and session ahead. Bex and Catriona shared their experience of doing one of their first mission at the weekend.

Then we headed off to toward Sun Road to meet Pauline at Maystar Estates. They’d asked us to come back for the next two weeks to help out in their community hall and garden. Our small Goodgym army was tasked with weeding estate flower beds, planting and watering some new plants in the raised garden beds, cleaning the community hall windows and helping out in two older residents gardens.

After our time was up, the sun had come out and we headed back to base via the river, stopping for a group photo(shoot) by Hammersmith Bridge.

Lovely stuff!

19 good eggs ran 3km to help out H&F Mind.

We started our lovely sunny evening in the Hammersmith the Better gym. Here I gave the runners a briefing about our run ahead and the night’s task. We had two runners Grace and Aisling who joined us for their first Goodgym session and Paul touristing from Wansworth (this being his lucky 13th area in London to visit).

After shooing the chickens back in the barn and warming up the rest of our limbs, we headed off on the short run towards the task. The streets were pretty busy on the way there, but we made it in one piece.

Once we arrived at Mind we found they had 8 chairs for us to build. This involved deciphering the flat pack furniture instructions and some good team work. Each chair had two people working to construct it. As we had 2 bonus goodgymers to chair ratio, Catriona and Paul got stuck into weeding the two flower beds... with spoons - very resourceful.

Team Anders and Sarah W completed their chair 1st out of the group, then Team Jason and Josh 2nd, then in 3rd place Sarah K and Steve.

After everyone had completed the chairs and we had taken a photo for proof we head off towards Lille Road Rec.

Here we did some running technique, muscle memory drills. - doing high skips for leg drive & calf strength - high knees to reinforce knee lift - bum kicks for promote quick feet/lower leg movement - running backwards for glutes & hamstring strengthening - stroppy ponies for practicing our foot landing position

After that, we finished up with a time trial around the park.

After the session it was time for our monthly social in Draught House where we went for drinks, food and some DIY flag making. The awesome Catriona supplied us with fabric pens, paints and a big bed sheet to make Hammersmith & Fulham’s flag for the Olympics. Lots of fun was had by all.

Lovely stuff! Until next week, happy running :)

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