Off the rails!

Three Goodgymers from Waltham Forest went to Traid charity shop to help them with a store refurb. Ramon, Ruby and Charlotte ran varying distances (Ramon and Ruby definitely ran furthest) and met at Traid on the High Street to help the team do a big spring clean and rotate their stock for the new season. They helped take the clothes from the rails to be packed in huge cardboard boxes, so the store could be cleaned, displays and rails could be moved around, and new stock could be put out. They also helped move some big boxes of shoes (Ramon found a pair he liked!) The trio made short work of the task and by 7pm had put on their running shoes (not the ones from the charity shop) and headed off into the night.

What a lovely evening for this week's task!!!

Charlotte, Tony and Julia met in the churchyard and after initial faffing with getting the keys Julia opened up the storage room to get the tools and summer bulbs.

We were planting these alongside a fence by the road so that the flowers can provide a splash of colours for passers by in the future.

Soon after Saj and Ray arrived and also got stuck in with the planting.

After half an hour we moved onto the second (improvised) task of clearing the Greem Alkanet which whilst looks pretty can really take over the land! This was a very satisfying task and Ray really got into his raking with great clearing results!

Well done to everyone for coming along - great social banter as usual!

What a lovely warm evening for a spot of weeding, clearing and chatting!

We met directly at the session for some needed maintenance around the church - Jamie from the church met us there and offered a cuppa! Which was lovely:)

We then cleared a couple of areas of ivy, weeds and rubbish so that the spring flowers can really shine!

It was banter-central (as usual) and such a wellbeing boost from laughter!

Great work everyone and until next week!

Crikey this was a rainy session!!!

It all started well before the session - Tony and Julia got caught in the torrential rain and hailstone crazyness of biblical proportions!!! So both arrived at Greenleaf very much soaked to the bones:)

Everyone else decided to 'skip the rain' and come straight to the St Mary's church task directly. Nice try! but you can't fight the weather:)

Our task was to move a pile of rubble from one place to another and clear up a couple of tombs from Ivy that looks pretty but is really damaging as it can crack the strongest of marbles!

We started with a nice little session of circuits with jumping jacks, tricep dips, press ups and lunges that we rotated around. The weather was really nice but it pretty much started to rain straight away and as if by plan Saj's 'mum called' so he 'had to go and hide under the tree':)

It was a nice surprise to see Matthew come by as well and help out with the gardening task!

We had lots of banter the summary of which cannot be repeated in writing and we found a lovely little froggy, which Helen skillfully used to come up with a nicely punny report title!

Super enjoyable evening for a jog, talk and baby clothes donation-sorting!

This was a tale of two groups coming together - one group that included Pippa, Ramon, Julia and Saj (who met us mid-run) met at the usual base to catch-up and wait for others to arrive. We started with a small warmup and then took a very flat direct route to Leytonstone - it was a very nice evening with minimum cars on quiet roads so time went very quickly and we arrived at the Cornerstone church in no time where we met the second group (Amarjit, Tony and Helen) that came directly to the 'do good' part of the evening.

Our lovely hosts Lindsey and Sophie met us and showed us inside where they kindly prepared some water and sweets for us:) They then explained what needed to be done and we got on with it. It was such a nice way to spend this time on Wednesday evening - great opportunity to catch-up with fellow goodgymmers and hear what's everyone been up to, sort super-cute baby clothes to make sure that only the best gets donated.

Time went super quickly!!!! So the running crew left to jog back to Walthamstow whilst the rest of folks carried on helping out to make it into a full community mission.

Great job everyone - always a pleasure to see our community come together like this on Wednesday. See you next week for the next session - sign up here.

Super mild evening jogging around and weeding!

We all met up at Greenleaf Rd with a bit of a pre-run catch up. It was lovely to welcome Matthew back after work and child-duties have been keeping him away for a while! Great to see you back Matthew!:)

We started with a warm-up and then had an easy jog of aproximately 2.3km to St Peters. On arrival we were looking out for Ama and were a little bit worried she wasn't there but it turns out Ama let me know well in advance, if only I checked my emails:)

Our task today was pulling off ivy off gravestones - that ivy was gripped very strongly and it can really damage the gravestones! We picked a little area at the back and had an enjoyable 30-40mins bantering away and clearing the gravestones. In all that jolly I forgot to take the photos of the group so I improvised - what do you reckon?;)

The jog back was also really nice as the weather continued to be really mild and rain-free. We got to the church and had a thorough stretch down, including a 'controversial' behind the back arm stretch - come along next time to find out what it is!:)

Don't forget to sign up to next week's gardening task and a post-weeding social!