On a sunny Tuesday evening, 19 of us ran to The Nest Project in Bath. We sorted and organised a heap of donated childrens' clothes and then ran them up the stairs to store they away in boxes. This was a really rewarding task that we enjoyed a lot and we were thrilled to run over 8km overall.

Welcome Jamie and Paddy!

After meeting inside the leisure centre we formed a large circle outside in the forecourt. We welcomed two new runners, Jamie and Paddy to the team. We hope you both come back and join us again for some volunteering! After introducing the task, running through the risk assessment and warming up we headed on our way.

Good to see you again, Sam!

We were delighted to have one of our top GoodGym members, Sam P, who used his day off to come back to Bath and run with us again. Great to see you, Sam, and thanks for your help last night! Hopefully we will see more of you soon!

Pub quiz last week

On the last Thursday of every month we field a team in the pub quiz at St James Wine Vaults. Thanks for Emma for organising this and well done to the group who represented us last week!

You've seen the rest, but then there's The Nest!

The Nest Project is based in Brassmill Enterprise Centre in Lower Weston, near the Locksbrook Inn. This was the first group run of 2019 where it was light enough to run along the river. We were delighted to be running along the Avon and enjoying the wildlife and the scenery! We even managed to get in some extra training in the form of tricep dips on the wooden fences along the river path.

We made it to the task in good time, eager for the task ahead!

Our host, Pip, met us at the task. She is one of the volunteers who coordinates the project and she gave us an overview of what the team there do. They receive donations of children's clothes and equipment for ages 0-5years. Anyone from the community can come and ask for clothes, completely free of charge. This is a fantastic charity and a great community asset that we love going back to help.

The task for the evening was to sort a small mountain of donated clothes into different sections, based on gender and age. There were 10 different categories in the end and we made sure to stay organised with signs on the floor and by placing boy's clothes in front of the plastic tubs and girl's clothes inside the tubs.

Dress to impress!

Among the clothes, some of the best finds were a pair of cute little converse shoes, a wonderful red hat and, strangely enough ... a bra!

Time flies by at The Nest!

After our organising, we then formed a line and ran the clothes up to the storage areas upstairs. This will make it easier for the team of volunteers to distribute the clothes to families who come to the project.

Thanks!

Thanks to Pip for helping arranging this task and spending her Tuesday evening facilitating us! Thanks also to Chris and Emily for backmarking for us last night and thanks to Sam P for the pun.

Upcoming runs

• We have an awesome Community Mission on Sat 27th April at The Orchard
• We are also doing a Community Mission on Sun 28th April as part of the 2019 Worldwide City Nature Challenge
• Next week: we have a really fun outdoor task where we are gardening at Alice Park Community Garden. Sign up here!

A RIGHT ROYAL RUN

16 super runners ran 3km to Royal Victoria Park and were honoured to be joined by GoodGym royalty, Steph, our very own Lady Bath. We made the most of the early evening light to run the scenic route past the Theatre Royal, in and around Queens Square and stopped for sets of fantastically unsynchronised squats on the Royal Crescent lawn!

RUN FOR YOUR WORLD

Tonight’s task was a litter pick in the park focused around Earth Hour, a global campaign overseen by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to raise awareness of environmental issues. Earth Hour is this Saturday 30th March at 8:30pm-9:30pm (local time), join millions around the world to turn off the lights and speak up about why nature matters. https://www.earthhour.org/

YOU GOTTA REDUCE, RE-USE, RECYCLE

Our runners divided into task teams, we had the ‘rakers’ to target the sandpits and woodchipped areas around the play equipment, and some may have sampled some of the delights of the play equipment themselves!

Plus we had the ‘litter pickers’ who deftly cleaned around the perimeter fence, ducked under picnic benches and retreated into the undergrowth to retrieve rubbish.

Rob achieved legend status with the skaters who he managed to persuade to help him load up a big bag of litter from the Skate Park!

Once the light and temperature dropped we headed back to base for some stretching and reminders:

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

This Thursday is our social activity, the Pub Quiz at St. James Wine Vaults (BA1 2TW) 8:00pm (for a 9:00pm quiz). Everyone welcome, hope to see you there. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/pub-quiz-social

Next week’s Group Run task is clothes sorting and the clocks will have sprung forward so we’ll have the light on our side to run along the canal out to our hosts at the Nest Project: https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/organising-donated-baby-clothes-d801eea0-cbe3-4e1f-99b6-0335d387cab5

WELL DONE AND THANK YOU

Welcome and well done to Melanie on her first GoodGym Group Run, the first of many we hope. Thank you to Allie and Chris for back marking and to Nicola for the Run Report pun.
Well done all for a good run and job well done!

This week we delivered flyers for The Together Project to advertise their charity cèilidh. We delivered a whopping 550 flyers around Widcombe and Holloway. There were 16 of us in total and we ran 4.5km.

This was the first time this year we met outside the Leisure Centre because of the light evening and the mild weather. What a treat! I gave a short introduction to the task and Nicola, who founded and runs The Together Project, gave an overview of the work the charity does and more information about the cèilidh.

Charity cèilidh

A cèilidh, Nicola explained, is a form of Gaelic dancing where an instructor in the front leads the dance by announcing instructions. It is a really fun way to get people of all ages together and it is a great form of exercise.

The Together Project

The Together Project provides free veterinary care to cats and dogs owned by homeless and vulnerable people in Bath. The volunteers run a free clinic every two weeks at Julian House. This is a fantastic community resource that has massive benefits both for the pets and their owners. All proceeds of the cèilidh will go towards keeping the project running in Bath by providing vaccinations and medications for the animals.

Join the cèilidh!

The event is being held at St Mark's Community Centre in Widcombe on Saturday 9th March at 7pm. See more info here.

Cut us some slack!

The first part of our task was using scissors to cut up the flyers and get them into piles so we could hold them while we ran. There was some fantastic team work with some holding big blocks of paper and others cutting the flyers to A5 size.

Come fly-er with me, let's flyer-let's flyer awayyyyyyy!

We split into two groups for this flyering task. I lead a group of runners part of the way up Ralph Allen Drive. We flyered along the side roads and then went down Church Street to connect with Widcombe Hill. After delivering flyers along the hill and some of the shops on Widcombe Parade we then flyered along The Tyning - where we enjoyed some spectacular views across the city - and then finished our route with some houses on Great Pultney Road.

Catrin and the wild goose chase of '19!

Catrin got to the Leisure Centre a few minutes after we left and she valiantly chased us around the hills of Widcome to try and catch us up. After an evening of wild goose chasing, she managed to find us and we made sure that she had the honour of delivering our final flyer! Well done for your perseverance Catrin!

Fly(er)ing up those hills!

Emily lead another group of runners around the lower parts of Holloway and Bear Flat. The group snaked their way around the hilly roads at the heart of Widcombe to deliver flyers to the houses around there.

Thanks!

Thanks so much to Nicola for thinking of us and arranging for the flyers to be printed. We really enjoyed it and look forward to working with The Together Project again! Thanks enormously to Emily for volunteering to lead a group and thanks to Joe for the pun this week!

Upcoming runs

• On Thursday we are heading to St Jame's Wine Vaults for our monthly pub quiz. Sign up here!
• Running the Bath Half? We have an 18km training run this Sunday.
• Next week we are gardening at Action on Hearing Loss. Sign up here!

Social Media

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Organisations have already reached out to us using these platforms which means we can orgnaise more varied tasks for you to enjoy!

We ran to The Nest Project in Bath. We sorted and organised a whole mountain of baby clothes and then ran them up the stairs to put them in storage. This was a really fun task and we were thrilled to rack up a massive 8km of running! Good work everyone!

Welcome Michaela!

After meeting inside the Leisure Centre we formed a large circle outside in the forecourt. We welcomed a new runner, Michaela to the group. She is a keen runner and we were glad to have her enthusiasm to help us on this task! We hope you come back and join us again Michaela! I introduced the task to the group, ran through the risk assessment and then we headed on our way.

Be hoNEST, we were amazing!

The Nest Project is based in Brassmill Enterprise Centre in Lower Weston, near the Locksbrook Inn. Unfortunately it isn't light enough yet to run along the river so we took a route through the town centre, along Upper Bristol Road and then down onto Locksbrook Road. We made it there in good time, ready for our task!

The FunNEST task we have done in ages!

We met our host Pip. She is one of the volunteers who helps coordinate the project and gave us an overview of what the team there do. They receive donations of children's clothes and equipment for ages 0-5years. Anyone from the community can come and ask for clothes, completely free of charge. This is a fantastic charity and a great community asset that we love going back to help.

A new experience for us - we are branching out!

Our task for the evening was to sort a small mountain of donated clothes into different sections, based on gender and age. There were about 10 different categories in the end and we made sure to stay organised with signs on the floor and by placing boy's clothes in front of the plastic tubs and girl's clothes inside the tubs.

We run for dress relief!

Some of the best finds were a pair of purple 'monster-faced' trousers (which Chris wore so well!), a cute Pooh t-shirt modelled by Emily, a very fetching purple sleeveless jacket (attempted to be) worn by Tim and a very colourful dress!

We then ran up the stairs to their storage area to fill their containers with the organised clothes. There are lots of boxes of clothes up there and our hard work will make it even easier for local people to access clothes and equipment for their young ones.

This was a really fun task and we enjoyed looking at how small and cute some of the toddler clothes were! And lots of them are incredibly high quality, so if you know anyone that is looking for children's clothes or equipment (like buggies) then head along to The Nest Project!

Thanks!

Thanks to Chris for very kindly volunteering to backmark for us again this week. And thanks to Emily for the pun!

Upcoming runs

• This Saturday we are running 16km along the canal path. Note: This isn't a traditional GoodGym task but is a training run at a particular pace. Sign up here.
• On Sunday we are going to be gardening with some National Trust volunteers on the Bath Skyline Walk. This will be awesome, so sign up here!
• Next week we are flyering for a charity cèilidh run by The Together Project. An fantastic charity - make sure to sign up here!