Last night, in this crazy new world we’re trying to adjust to, it was so good to connect with the GoodGym Ealing crew! ❤️

We went round and shared something positive we’ve been able to do in the past couple of days, despite the situation we find ourselves in, before embarking on a favourite fitness session. Sally Squats assemble! 💪🏻

Can’t wait to see everyone in person once this is all over but for now I’m just so grateful of this wonderful community we have and that we’re still able to ‘see’ each other like this in the meantime. 🥰

Rain threatened just before but that didn’t stop 14 of us coming out to support Cultivate London last night.

Cultivate London are an urban farm and social enterprise that sponsor and train unemployed young people in landscaping and horticulture. All whilst also working to engage communities in food growing and changing the way Londoners think about their fresh produce and where it comes from.

All the news:

• GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead launches next Wednesday 26th February. A few of us are heading over to support and if you've never been to a launch before, they are great fun! Sign up here to get involved.

• The GoodGym Games are happening on Saturday 18th July this year in Oxford. Chris will be team captain from Ealing this year and will be rallying the troops for the event but you can sign up here.

• The 2020 GoodGym Shindig will take place over the weekend of Friday 7th August - Sunday 9th August and I'd love to see a few of you guys from Ealing there! The Shindig is for everyone who wants to be involved in making GoodGym as good as it can be, whether you've done one run or 100 everyone is welcome, new runners especially! You can find out all the details here, be sure to register your interest!

• Race for free when you volunteer at Hackney Half - That's right if you volunteer at this event you get a free place at another event. And they ain't cheap so it's a good deal!

And the most important news of all...

• Our pizza party social is happening after the run on 3rd March - sign up right here so I know how many to book a table for.

Recap of last night:

No newbies this week but Alec and Mathilde both hit 15 good deeds for a shiny new badge on their profile. Go give them a cheer!

We warmed up with the classic question of what’s your favourite animal (lots of cat lovers) before setting off at a nice pace across Ealing Common and down to Acton. The run out felt great, (thanks downhill route and tail wind!) and we even had the energy for 10 press ups at a traffic light break.

When we arrived, Auberon from Cultivate was ready for us where our original task was put on hold in order to help move a wrongly placed pile of wood chips instead. They’d been delivered in front of a gate that needed to close to be able to lock the site.

But we didn’t have a chip on our shoulder about it...

Working in pairs we filled bag after bag of wood chips so that the gate could be released. We lost count of bags after about 30 but it was probably close to 70 bags we filled and shifted. What a workout!

With sweet freedom for the gate achieved it was time to pack up and head back where we now faced a slight uphill and head wind. Great resistance training if you ask me!

We wrapped up with some stretches just as the heavens opened with some biblical rain and hail. How’s that for timing!

See you all next time!

THREEdom for food waste! The next installment of the 'Day of Good' in Ealing!

On Saturday 18th January GoodGym Ealing hosted a whole day of good deeds in the borough including filling all the volunteer roles at Gunnersbury parkrun, litter picking our way around Gunnersbury Park afterwards, sorting surplus food and organising crates at City Harvest and finishing up for another litter pick in Acton Park.

Part 3:

Onto part 3 of 4 of a fun filled day of Goodgyming with the Ealing Crew and a bunch of Goodgym Tourists from all over London.

Task three day was to help City Harvest London with sorting through there food donations, and sorting through the plastic crates and helping to tidy up their unit.

City London Harvest puts surplus food to good use in a sustainable way. This great charity ensures food that would otherwise have been disposed of goes to help those who are hungry.

-They collect food from a variety of sources from across the food industry.

Pack, Wrap, n Stack!

• We had a variety of tasks sorting through and restacking several hundred plastic crates was a fun a strenuous start to the task.

Fuelled on by Bananas & some excellent Vegan Biscuits (thanks Liv) we kept going.

We then then moved on to helping to load up their delivery vehicles with crates packed for food deliveries.

We sorted out the frozen food, and separated the fruit and vegetables.

No crying over Spilt Milk.

• One of the more challenging parts of the day was disposing of the Milk that had passed its sell by date. Two hearty Goodgymmers took on that task.

Various other jobs were completed such as tidying up the food packaging, sorting out pallets and filling up the fridge full of fruit juice drinks.

It was then to a quick pit stop for lunch before heading on to task four of the day!

TWO good to be true at our next part of our 'Day of Good' in Ealing!

On Saturday 18th January GoodGym Ealing hosted a whole day of good deeds in the borough including filling all the volunteer roles at Gunnersbury parkrun, litter picking our way around Gunnersbury Park afterwards, sorting surplus food and organising crates at City Harvest and finishing up for another litter pick in Acton Park.

Part 2:

For good deed number two, we stuck around after parkrun to help clean up the lovely park we all love to run in. Splitting into three groups we spread ourselves out around the park to hit up some notorious hot spots for litter - in general the park is in pretty good shape but there's always a few sections that are sadly abused.

We met back at the cafe after to compare our findings, luckily lots of stuff for able to be sent off for recycling but we still found quite a lot of just general waste, at least it's not longer in the park!