Several GoodGymers met on a Saturday lunchtime to help sort surplus food donations ready to be sent out to various different charities. As all the food has short sell by dates this is an important task to prevent as much of it as possible from going to waste.

This will be a regular monthly task so join us again at the start of May for some more good!

9 GoodGymers from lots of different boroughs made their way to Acton on a Saturday afternoon to help City Harvest sort through their surplus food donations!

Different from traditional food banks which generally provide long life items, the food we sorted at City Harvest is all fresh short life surplus food donated from places such restaurants, supermarkets, wholesalers, hotels and caterers. It needs to be turned around FAST in order to make it out to other charities and organisations that can use it to help feed those who need it most.

Where does the food go?

City Harvest delivers all the donated surplus food to organisations that provide meals to vulnerable people including homeless shelters, soup kitchens, after school programs, centres for veterans, and organisations that assist people with alcohol or drug addictions.

As a group we spent just over 2 hours sorting large deliveries of food into smaller crates to go out to lots of different places, a couple of us even went out on a delivery to help unload at the other end and see where all the food ends up!

Lots of us were shocked as to how much food there was that would otherwise go to waste if places like City Harvest didn't exist to help redistribute it

Everyone left feeling like we'd made a huge difference, there was so much to do and it was great to see all that potential food waste go to those who need it. We will be looking to work with City Harvest on a regular basis going forward and will have a monthly first Saturday of the month slot to help at the warehouse like we did today, the next one is already up on the website so sign up now!

A very rare sight occurred this week as I arrived at the Hammersmith Fitness & Squash Centre, Jason was not already there ready and waiting - we missed you tonight Jason, hope you're ok and resting your achilles, hopefully see you soon! As the clock hit 6.55pm there was only a handful of runners and I was a touch worried that the combination of the slightly longer run distance, weekend races and injuries had hit my group. However, I shouldn't have feared as minutes later there was the mass entrance of runners, timed to perfection!

It was great to see the familar face of Alex along doing some GoodGym tourism - hope you enjoyed it and hopefully see you again next week!

As it was a lovely mild Autumnal evening we all headed outside for a quick round-up of this week's news...

1. Well done to all those that raced at the weekend and good luck to those running the Royal Parks Half, the 10K/Marathon in York and those doing Cross Country in Claybury this weekend.
2. The run was a #RunAndTalk session, a wonderful campagin from England Athletics that is supported by the mental health charity, Mind. With World Mental Health Day on Wednesday 10th October this week their week long campaign encourages people to #RunAndTalk to improve their mental wellbeing. Have a read of the wonderful blog about mental health and running by Tower Hamlets trainer, Laura here.
3. October Long Run - this month's long run will be on Sunday 21st October. It will be a 19.3km run along the Capital ring - East Finchley to Hackney Wick and will be led by Simon Fitzmaurice. Sign up here.
4. Fulham 10K - Sunday 18 November - If you've entered, or are thinking about entering. Sign up here.

AND...a big well done to Catriona who completed her 50th good deed last night - so much good done!

Following a quick warm-up and name and number count, in honour of Catriona's 50th good deed we played a quick-fire game of 'True' or 'False' with Catriona based questions. Those in the group that chose the incorrect answer had a small forfeit of an exercise, such as 5 x burpees or 5 x press-ups. With Catriona herself unsure of a few of the answers and in general disbelief that she had run over 700km this year (p.s. I double-checked last night and this did only include running!!), the group ended almost in unanimous agreement, minus Andrew on the final question as to whether or not she had stayed out at the social last week until last orders! Great work and knowledge all!

Warm-up and the mini-game complete we headed off on our 4km run up to Family Friends with Catriona taking up the role of back-marker in Jason's absence. Everyone, myself included were sceptical as to whether we would manage to run there without getting lost en-route...

Hot desking

Amazingly we arrived without getting lost and made our way up the office of Family Friends. We were met by Graham, the administrator at Family Friends who explained to the group what Family Friends do - they are wonderful small charity which is solely volunteer run that carefully recruits, trains and matches volunteers with parents, children or adolescents and provide both parent befriending and child/adolescent befriending and mentoring services to families living in deprived areas of West London. Our task tonight was to help remove and dispose of some desks from one room and relocate a couple of filing cabinets and a printer. What sounded like a relatively simple and speedy task quickly became a more complex task once it was apparent that the desks were not going to fit nicely through the door, even with the desk feet removed. After a few attempts and different angles attempted by Alex and Graham to remove the first desk from the room they decided it was time to admit defeat and take a new approach...the forceful demolishing pre-removal approach!

Printer is coming...

Tom, Andrew and Chris got quickly stuck into taking apart one of the desks while Alex and Martynas (with Graham's help) took apart the other desk, quite literally! Alex ripped off one of the desk's leg and it wasn't long before the drawers and other parts of the desk were being removed outside the office with the help of Abi and Catherine. While the others worked on the desks in the other room, Fiona, Catriona and Arba moved the filing cabinet and printer, which looked deceptively heavier than it looked! Desks removed, and the printer re-located into the other room our work was done. As a thank you, Graham kindly provided refreshments and some treats to the group to help fuel them on the run back to base. Nicely re-fuelled the group posed for a quick group photo and said their goodbyes to Graham.

Two deeds purse...

Sadly, Johnny and Sarah missed the group photo as while the group were lending a hand at Family Friends, they had continued their run an extra 2km up to complete another good deed of the day; they went on a mission to return a purse that Johnny had found earlier in the day. The woman was hugely appreciative, well once they had convinced her they weren't on a charity promotion mission, as she had not yet realised the absence of her purse! Lovely stuff guys.

With two good deeds completed and the group back together we all began the 4km ran back to base, with the decision made to follow the same route back so as not to tempt fate with directions as time was beginning to get against us, and there was post-run celebrations and cake to be had! It wasn't long before we were back at base having a cool down and stretch, very much thinking of all the well-earnt cake and drink refreshments!

It cakes two!

The 'Great British Bake Off' season may be back on TV but here at GoodGym H&F we have our own bakers and selection of cakes within the group to celebrate milestones, and last night was no exception - a 50th good deed = 2 cakes! Johnny's gluten-free lemon drizzle cake was absolutely divine and was polished off by the group in no time at all! A handshake from Paul Hollywood would definitely have been given! With one of the cakes demolished marginally quicker than desks, we headed off the pub for the second cake and post-run chat. Sadly my coffee and walnut cake had not survived my day's tube journey's particularly well so had a 'slight lean' to it but was still edible and seemed to go down well with everyone's drink of choice.

Thank you all for a really fun night, hope you have a lovely week! And thank you to Catriona for the punspiration and extra photos!

Next week, we're doing some flyering for a couple of local charity's which I will attempt to combine with a hopefully fun scavenger hunt! Sign up here.