We avoided today's windy weather and dark clouds and gathered for a Double Leaf Whammy, running to help Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group clearing leaves at Holy Trinity Church and Penny Brohn with leafleting for their Christmas Concert on 6th December.

Penny for your thoughts

Alice D headed off with a group of 9 hardy runners to battle the hills of Clifton to distribute 1 million (or probably 500) leaflets in just 45 minutes around the area. Penny Brohn will be so pleased with this increased advertising. I will give them a head's up about booking out the stadium...

Unbeleafable

Meanwhile, the rest of the group headed to Holy Trinity Church and were split into groups for various jobs. The Leaf Team were armed with brushes, rakes and recycling bags to tackle the mounds of leaves on the pathways and grass. Of course this couldn't be done without throwing and kicking a good load around before getting down to business.

The Loppers got to work clipping back bushes to clear an entrance to.... a telephone box. We marvelled at the idea that people were still using the telephone box, and marvelled further when we realised that we were in fact clearing the window to the box rather than the entrance. Meanwhile, Liam and Dhanesh casually sawed down a tree in approximately 8 minutes, showing their future careers as tree surgeons.

Finally, The Leafleters were kitted out with their maps and their target destinations and split into three teams to distribute as many hundreds of leaflets for Christmas events as they could.

Not mulch left

By 7.30, nothing was leaf-left, including the digestive biscuits. We regrouped and ran back to the Queen Square, stopping for some cheeky sprints and squat jumps along the way.

Thanks to Lexi, Richard, Gary and Jack for tonight's puns

Tonight, 40 runners left the bonfires for the evening and headed to the streets to get into a different kind of festive spirit. It was great to have Francesca join us for the first time tonight - welcome Francesca! With a last minute change of plan for the British Heart Foundation, we got to work with distributing the pile of flyers which Children's Hospice South West had provided us with to help them advertise their Santas on the Run event on 8th December.

Santa Claus is Running through Town

Melanie set off with Jack to start the walking group for tonight (making a lovely GoodGym archway for us along the way), and then the rest of us headed towards Southville to get distributing. The group were split into 6 teams and allocated a road each to get leafleting. The teams spread out and in no time and spread the news around the area. The first team back got the brilliant prize of getting to do the most squat jumps and lunges while the rest of the teams got back to the base.

Relay-ing the news

We then headed to our second station where we did our leafleting relay, with Teams 5 and 6 skimming the win a few seconds ahead of Teams 1 and 2. Meanwhile, poor Teams 3 and 4 and pulled the short straw and were on a much longer relay length, so managed to get some extra training in!

We headed back to Queen Square where we added to the night's relaying with our new game: Shona's Deck of Cards featuring lots of burpees, lunges and Darren trying to knock me off my feet with his sprinting.

After all of this, we wished all the weekend's racers good luck and headed to Chilli Daddy for this month's Eats, proving that you don't need fireworks for fire. 🌶️

46 GoodGymers braved the cold and the first dark, dark night of the winter to come and get fit and do good. We got warmed up (revealing some shocking facts along the way, including who eats dinner before they come to GoodGym) and then split into our three groups for the night.

Alice led the first group to Fry Court to finish off a Community Mission from last month, Richard was leading a team of rubble movers to help Up Our Street and the rest of us headed to St Paul's Adventure Playground.

Frytonight

Alice's group were tasked with finishing weeding a raised bed at Fry Court sheltered housing and adding some fresh compost ready for the residents to plant. The gentleman who lived closest to the plot was absolutely delighted, and came to thank the team specially. Not satisfied with just one set of good in a night, the team then did some leafleting relays down Stackpool road to get seasonal with the Christmas Santa Dash happening in just 5 weeks' time!

GoodGym causing t'rubble

Richard's team were also set to work on the raised beds. They met Melissa from Up Our Streetwho showed them the area to clear, which was three beds with lots of rubble on top. The group got to work clearing this area and wheelbarrowing the debris away (with Gary and Darren fitting in some 90 metre sprints along the way) and made a massive dent in the work. A local resident even stopped to say thank you to the group :)

Insane in the membrane

Meanwhile the rest of the group was at St Paul's Adventure Playground where we had three tasks: to clear all of the leaves from the playground from the London Plane Tree, which become slippy and dangerous; to continue digging the trench we started last month for a tyre barrier next to the flying fox swing; and to help the team from Monkey Do who are building a brand new swing with digging a big hole for it. The leaves were soon cleared, the trench was well on it's way to housing the final two tyres and the giant hole was not quite a giant hole, but the team made a jolly good crack at it (intermingled with conducting their own archaeological dig to find a giant membrane from the ground which was not, as at first wondered, a long-lost fossil). With very muddy trainers, we headed back to Queen Square.

Centuri-darr-en

Once everyone had reconvened from their tasks, it was time to celebrate the amazing Darren achieving his 100th Good Deed tonight - massive well done Darren!! He donned the centurion outfit, did the Gallop of the 100s, and then treated us all to his incredible vegan carrot cake and millionaire's shortbread bakes. Who needs the Bake Off final?!

Tonight's pun kudos goes to Alice, Lexi and Richard

One big task, seven excellent runners, 180 seconds of plank and six confusing maps!

It all began at Chiswick Town Hall, as shown by the GoodGym poster on the wall which has categorically never covered any other poster on the noticeboard. Just saying.

You've been dong some great running this week, Hounslow. A big well done to Adam who has been notching up the runs, with a new parkrun PB on Saturday. Must be the beetroot bread! A hat tip too to Jo and Andy who are sailing through the good deeds. Don't forget that we might have our first 50th good deed to celebrate next Wednesday, so stick around after the run for a little fun to mark this great milestone.

This week's task was leafleting for Waterman's Art Centre. Not everybody's favourite task, but a very useful one for the charity. This weekend is the centre's River Weekender - a festival inspired for the river packed with free events for the whole community. Our job was to spread the word in the local area, and it began, as all good things do, with a run.

After a quick warm up featuring a rather natty side hop ("isn't this just...running?"), we set off on the 2k run down to Waterman's. But not before finding out our favourite condiments! There was no stand out winner this week, but ketchup, Lea & Perrins (other brands are available), dijon mustard, mint sauce (from the veggie), pepper, chutney and BBQ were all contenders. Lovely stuff.

A nice speedy run later we arrived at reception to be presented with a bulging trolley full of leaflets and a series of highlighted maps. Cue several minutes of trying to figure out what to do next ("isn't this the same map? Turn it upside down. No, the other way"). We soon cracked it though, and split up into groups to start putting leaflets through doors, into hands, pubs and travelodges before meeting up towards the end of the run to smash out a few door to door sprints.

We finished on a bit of a high after having delivered countless leaflets and enjoying a nice stretch when we were brought up short by the angriest flamenco teacher in town. No we didn't move your poster, mister. Still, we had the plank off to make us feel better, and what a plank off it was. The seconds ticked by and everybody was going strong - who was going to emerge victorious? Some great work from everybody, but this week the crown goes to Andy with an impressive 2 min 37 plank. Wowzer!

Next week it's going to be all sorts of fun planting bulbs and hopefully we'll have something to celebrate too. Sign up here for your Wednesday dose of goodness and fitness!

22 awesome runners ran 3km to clear leaves at Ballast Quay Garden!

After a few weeks of 7k+ runs, it was nice to stay local for a change! And you can't get more local than Ballast Quay!

We welcomed back Glenn who ran with us a few times earlier in the year but had a break to climb Mont Blanc... NICE!! We were also joined by the lovely Winnie who usually runs with GG Southwark :) And lastly, Helen who turned up with a little baby bump... amazing news!!! SO happy for you Helen!!!! Maybe if it's a boy you can call him Jim and if he's well behaved you can say Good Jim :)

After a little warm up we got on our way, starting off with a lap of the uni that much resembled the time trial route that was to come later on in the session! We arrived in no time and were greeted by the amazing Diane who has been looking after Ballast Quay Garden since the early 60s. Such a legend! And of course Tom the dog was there too! WOOF!

A few tasks were on the cards. The first one being a hedge/plant/thing that needed trimming back which Alex and Steve attacked straight away. Some heavy compost bags needed shifting from one side of the garden to the other. And finally, all the leaves needed clearing. There were two brooms and a dustpan and everyone else got stuck in with their hands, filling up the bins! After about 5 minutes, the first bin was full... but amazingly Diane said it was absolutely fine to just chuck all the compost and leaves over the edge of the wall into the Thames.... she even checked with the council! So that was fun.

20 minutes later and the place had never looked so tidy! AMAZING!

We took a group photo and even Tom decided to join us! Diane had kindly left out some juice and biscuits so a few people tucked in... gotta fuel that time trial!!!

Everyone's favourite fitness session

The first Wednesday of every month means only one thing, our 1km time trial around the uni! We have done this for a few months now, hopefully some of you are seeing some improvements???? Here is the official Strava leaderboard and you should be able to see all of your attempts on there too, provided it picked it up alright on your GPS.

After the TT, we had a nice little stretch and finished up a bit earlier than usual... the pub was calling after all!!! We headed to the Old Brewery for some food and drinks and were reunited with Mridula, Vickie and Pulin who went to do the mission in Shooter's Hill.

WHAT A LOVELY EVENING :)

Thanks so much for coming last night! I know there wasn't a huge amount of work for you all to do but you have saved Diane A LOT of time and effort and she really appreciates the work that you do so well done! See you next week for a NEW TASK!