Holy crêpe! 20 GoodGym'ers ran 6km as they did a litter pick of plogging around Bishop's Avenue

Another Tuesday evening crêped up on us fast! Despite the cold and dark weather, GoodGymers came out in their shroves to run and do good in their community!

A big welcome along to Francesca and Niamh who joined us for their first GoodGym run, and to our GoodGym Kingston tourists, Kate and Rob. Lovely to have you join us tonight!

Once everyone had successfully located and navigated the labrinyth that is the Hammersmith BetterGym we headed outside for the intros and a round-up of the week's news in our wonderfully glamorous warm-up spot...the corner of a car park! 😂

Have I got shoes for you!

1. Race volunteers needed - Volunteer at The Big Half - Sunday 1st Mar and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

2. Community Missions - Lots of Community Missions happening this Saturday! We'll be helping Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers from 10.20am, sign up here. Check out all the other upcoming Community Missions here.

3. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here. To join the GoodGym Team click here.

And, the BIG news of the week...it may have taken 20 soles to find her match but eventually Katie has found love with some new running shoes, 11 years after she bought her first (and maybe only?!) pair of running shoes* 👟🙌.

Life is batter with GoodGym!

We started our warm-up tonight with some high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and dynamic stretches before a quick blast of the 'number exercise' challenge, great for warming-up both the body and brain! The number '4' was added this week to keep everyone on their toes, and because as Matt said "everyone's a pro at this now". The team certainly dealt with this addition well...so next time '5'?!

With everyone nicely warmed-up we headed off on our nice and simple route tonight, straight down Fulham Palace Road to Bishop's Park Avenue. There was a lot of weaving in and around pedestrians so we decided to head down towards the river where it was far quieter and far more scenic! Along one of the streets we found a perfectly flat wall that just had 'wall sit' written on it so we stopped briefly for our weekly wall sit before continuing on.

Despite the biting wind it was great to run along the river path. We regrouped at the closed part of the river path and asked one of tourists tonight, Rob for an exercise. Clearly not trying to make friends with the team he suggested burpees?! Luckily for the team, our other tourist, Kate suggested the less brutal game of 'head, shoulders, knees, torch'....more mind games! Ultimately, it was Kate who was declared the winner! 👑

Getting fitter removing litter!

Matt led the way down to and through the tennis courts of Bishop's Park which lead to Bishop's Avenue, the road we'd been asked by the Parks Officer to do a litter pick on after all the storms and windy weather of late. As we headed down to the end of the avenue it seemed that there actually wasn't a huge amount of litter to be seen. The Council may havelitter-ally just beat us to it.

How much litter would a litter picker pick, if a litter picker could pick litter? 🚮

However, there was still litter to be picked so the team split into two groups and headed down opposite sides of the avenue with Matt and Chris kindly holding the hawklights to enable there to be more light! Amongst the railings there were wrappers and bits of paper gathered up, while many carefully wadded and sifted through the vegetation, pulling out and bagging lots of interesting finds; these included the sole of a shoe, 'hippy crack' canisters, and lots of bottles.

Tom emerged from a treasure trove of dumped weird and wonderful items with his hands full of rags, bags and broken objects. He had it all! With the temperature dropping and the thoughts of pancakes at the forefront of everyone's minds we called it a night and took a team photo with the four full bin bags of rubbish. Top work team!

As the team headed towards the big bin to throw the bin bags and other loose bits of rubbish away they received a lovely "thank you" from one of the gentlemen playing on the tennis courts. A lovely way to finish 😊.

Trash in the pan

With the trash mob complete we headed off back to base. Thankfully the streets were far emptier on the way back and required less weaving in and out to be done. I'm pretty sure we made it back to base in record-time! Back in our lovely warm-up spot we had a good stretch-off and all headed either home or onto the 'pancake party' hosted by Lucy.

To set the scene, here's a throwback from 2003.

Lucy had made 4 pints of batter to feed lots of hungry GoodGymers! Andrew and Katie started off on pancake cooking and flipping duty, stacking up lots of perfectly-made, and some rather 'on the paler side' pancakes. The selection of toppings was second to none, any topping you wanted it was there! Amongst some confusion and hilarity around who was a vegan (turns out Bev wasn't!) we also tested out some vegan pancakes with almond milk...I think the general consensus was "it's a no from me" 😬.

I went with the sad face pancake while Katie tossed one of hers on the floor...

This pancake then became the 'flipping' pancake, one person would flip the pancake in the air for someone else to catch and there were varying results...sometimes it was caught and other times it was back on the floor! According to Katie, the trick to a good flip was a hot pan!

A pan after Katie's heart...

Flipping perfection

Lucy finished off the last of the batter by wowing us with her pancake art of a unicorn and the GG logo - truly amazing! With lots of pancakes flipped, stacked and eaten it was time to call it a night.

Thank you for the stacks of lovely pancakes, Lucy, they were flipping amazing!!

Shoutouts 📢

1. Well done to Tom for completing a windy and royal Hampton Court Half on Sunday, and for backmarking tonight.
2. Good luck to all those running The Big Half on Sunday! If you're cheering or volunteering, look out for Lucy, Alice, and Speedy.
3. A big THANK YOU to the best pancake host and artist, Lucy!

Next week's task is still TBC, keep an eye on the WhatsApp group and your emails! Sign up for next week's run here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend 😃. Hopefully see you next week!

*This is definitely not recommended! A good rule of thumb is to replace your running shoes every 300–400 miles to prevent injury.

It was all Gogh, Gogh, Gogh at GoodGym H&F as 22 GoodGym'ers ran 3km to whiten up a room!

The heavens absolutely opened half an hour before we were due to head off on our group run and we all feared the worst, a wet and soggy run! We seemed to have luck on our side tonight, we had an indoor task and the GoodGym gods had worked their magic to hold off the rain for a few hours.

A big welcome along to Michele who joined us for her first GoodGym run, and welcome along to our tourists tonight, JP, Courtney and Michelle. Lovely to have you all along! Thank you as always to my regulars who come whatever the weather....rain, wind, storms....hopefully we'll have some sun soon!

With everyone geared up and ready we headed outside to our nice and dry warm-up spot where we ran through the intros and a round-up of the week's news.

News, news, news

1. Race volunteers needed: Volunteer at The Big Half - Sunday 1st Mar and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

2. Last Saturday of the month Community Mission with Fulham Palace Trust Volunteers. For all the details of the session on Saturday 29th February, click here.

3. Vitality Running World Cup - Represent your Country! First round begins on Thursday 5th March. Read all about it and sign up here. To join the GoodGym Team click here.

4. GoodGym Games 2020 - Oxford will be hosting this year! It will take place on the famous Sir Roger Bannister Running Track on Saturday 18th July. If you've not heard of the GoodGym Games then check out the report from last year.

Another nifty fifty 5️⃣0️⃣!

A big well done to Cookie for reaching his 50th good deed tonight! Not content with doing one good deed, he snuck in an extra good deed pre-group run to help move a hospital bed, furniture and fix a TV up in Camden. Top work! 🙌

No pain(t), no gain

With the warm-up complete and Stravas set we were ready to head off on our short 1.6km run down to our task tonight at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall, with Lucy kindly backmarking. En route there was a short group wall sit to enable everyone to re-group as we headed down off the main road. As the traffic lights changed we jumped up at the chance to cross the busy road as a group. Biscuits took the lead as we headed down the back streets near Barons Court tube station.

Another set of traffic lights against us allowed us to regroup a final time before we headed down the correct left turn - this was the third time I'd lead the group to Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and the first time we hadn't taken an unplanned scenic detour around the dead end that runs paraellel to West Kensington tube station....as they say, third time lucky! 😬

On the Monet

It wasn't long before we arrived at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall and were warmly welcomed in by Sara and Peggie. With the group gathered around, Sara briefly explained the vast range activities and engagment events that are provided at Gibbs Green Tenants Hall for the community – these include low cost yoga, meal provision from surplus food and hosting of parties.

Three years ago, GoodGym H&F group had visited and transformed the green walls of the main hall from green to white - Sarah and Biscuits fondly remember this as it was their first good task! Not the time to get emulsional though... Last year we returned and gave the main hall a fresh coat of white paint, however, with the main hall being so well used over the year the walls were now bearing some very visible dirt, scuffs and stains that needed a bit of GoodGym painting love.

Time to roll with it!

Tonight's task was simple, but big, repaint the main hall area walls with a nice fresh coat of white paint, a slightly different white - but, obviously it was hard to tell! With Sara and Peggie providing a wonderful selection of rollers, paint brushes and trays, the team quickly divided up and began distributing the white paint into the trays ready to tackle the big painting challenge. With so many helping hands tonight, Aine, Courtney and Cookie headed to the hallway to finish the tops of the walls that had been missed last time along with some fresh paint on the walls.

Painting down to a fine art!

Biscuits lived up to his name and tracked down the biscuits and chocolates, offering them out to the team as they kept rolling on with the painting, all GoodGym rollmodels.

Drop it like its squat

Brush hour

Paints and ladders

Many went up ladders, under ladders and stood on chairs to ensure that no hard to reach spots were missed. With so many pairs of hands quickly and efficiently painting the main hall walls and skirting boards, it wasn't long before everything had been painted and the team were spotting bits of the wall where the paint had dried, rather than been missed!

With a small amount of paint remaining the team decided to try and get the toilets painted as well. In slightly cosy conditions, JP, Chris and Annabelle began painting the walls in one toilet while Catriona, Beth, Andrew and Annabel began painting the walls in the other disabled toilet. As we neared the end of paint and time, many of us remembered that this was what had happened last time, and why there was still remnants of green paint at the top of the walls 🙈.

The walls are all white now

As always, time flew, and not wanting to leave the toilets looking too unfinished the teams pushed on for a few additional minutes while Sarah, Maddy, Biscuits, and Tom started on the washing up of all the painting equipment. We finally called time and gathered for the team photo with the ever smiley, Sara and Peggie. The photo was wonderfully choreographed by Lucy and Speedy and was complete with ladders and the everyone making a lovely 'heart' symbol in support of GoodGym's 'Give it Heart' theme for this month.

Best spuddies

Sara and Peggie kindly offered the group some potatoes to take home in canvas bags, and Cookie tapped into a fabulous 'market seller' who was selling "lovely potatoes, nice and cheap, get 'em before they're all gone!". With everyone 'tatoed up we all said our thank yous and goodbyes and began our run back to base.

As we stopped at the crossing, the great escape occured with a potato rolling away before being quickly retrieved. On the home straight the team stopped for a voluntarily wall sit - two wall sits in one night, double the building of isometric strength!

It wasn't long before we all arrived back and were stretching off. Lucy had been very eagle-eyed and spotted it was Cookie's 50th so had baked some amazing banana and carrot cake, freshly made with bananas saved from City Harvest! (check out the recipe, it's the last in the long photo reel and in the WhatsApp group!).

Excellent work tonight all, hope you all had fun! By my calculations, 21 runners working for 45 minutes adds up to over 15 hours of work!

Next week's task is still TBC, keep an eye on the WhatsApp group and your emails! Sign up for next week's run here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week, remember it's Shrove Tuesday!