An amazing 22 GoodGymers including 2 new runners, 4 tourists and lots of returning faces ran 6km last night to help stack, sort, shift and snip at Ealing Foodbank!

• Anna and Nikki came to GoodGym for the first time last night, big welcome to you both!
• Louise came all the way from Lewisham, Arran visited from Richmond and Andrew came from neighbouring Hammersmith and Fulham.
• We also had regular tourist Chi on his travels (does he have a home?!) who blasted tunes for us on the run yesterday evening!

Lovely to see you all!

After starting with a quick warm up we trotted off down to Ealing Foodbank in Hanwell to help with lots of different tasks across the site. Pumped up by Chi's tunes blasting from his running backpack we had a speedy group out at the front, regrouping and doing squats on the turns. With everyone safely onsite we got cracking as there was A LOT to do last night!

Team work makes the dream work!

We split ourselves into two groups, team outside were tidying up all the grounds surrounding the hall, litter picking, trimming and weeding. You guys did a wonderful job clearing five massive bags of garden waste and 2 bags of litter! The other team worked tirelessly inside trying to weight, sort and stack as much of the harvest donations as we could in the short time window we had. Between us we also bought along a few donations from our team too so it was great to see where it all goes and be a part of the process to help those who need it most! Our donation weighed in at around 10kg but we weighed nearly 250kg of donated goods in total.

That's a lot of good right there!

We didn't get everything finished last night as there was so much to do but Hilary from the centre explained that they had been really short on donations until recently so having too much stock to sort was definitely a good problem on this occasion!

Before we knew it time was up, so just a short jog back down to Ealing Broadway for some stretches and goodbyes. It was so great to see so many of you out last night and we'll be back at The Foodbank again soon as donations ramp up towards the festive period.

Until next time!

Another lovely sunny evening in Ealing saw 15 of us head to Walpole Walled Garden to take on a variety of garden tasks to help this wonderful local space!

No new faces this week but lots of second timers which was lovely to see. We started by doing a round of truth or lie, one true thing we were up to this coming bank holiday and one false. Some of us were very inventive with our fibs but everyone sounds like they have very exciting plans for the long weekend!

Off on our run we went and this week we looped around the park for a bit more mileage before the task, last weeks run was rather short so it’s good to mix up the distances!

Vanessa was prepped and ready to go when we arrived back in Walpole and had a good mix of jobs for us to complete for the evening within the walled garden area. We split ourself into teams and got stuck in!

• Team Watering - Jenni, Sam & Amanda
• Team Trimming - Rachael, Shan, Phill & Charlotte
• Team Potting - Chris, Callum, Steph, Sonia & Michael
• Team Digging - Sam & Bec

Now which team would you choose…

Well unlucky for Jenni, Sam and Amanda they definitely drew the short straw! You’d think watering is like a nice little job well not when you throw comfrey tea into the mix, the smell is definitely something that will stick with us all for a while. Every time any of them came near with their watering can you knew about it! Well done for sucking it up and getting the job done guys!

The rest of us had a fairly smooth ride for the evening (except for a little shock from some frogs hiding in the overgrowth!) all working efficiently in our teams to get all the jobs done! Time flew by and working until the bitter end left us just enough time to pack up and do a round of sally squats and planks in the park before jogging the short few minutes back to base.

The nights are definitely drawing in now and it’s getting dark as we say our goodbyes so hopefully catch you all again very soon while we still have the light evenings!

15 brilliant runners came out last night to tackle a thorny issue!

The brambles didn't stand a chance last night when our group took to The Ealing Transition Garden armed with heavy duty gloves, secateurs AND a massive root hammer. We were also joined by three brand new runners, a huge warm welcome to Sam, Rachel and Daisy! We also had a couple of tourists from GoodGym Hounslow, now a regular in these parts we had honorary Ealing member Andy but we also had the lovely Remy visit us for the first time. You all did a great job and it was lovely to see so many new faces!

We also had one mini milestone run this week as our lovely Sam completed his 15th good deed!

To get to know each other we like to open with a group question every week and this weeks starter was all about Disney and what our favourite films were, a good range of answers and a lot of pixar love!

After a quick briefing we were off to the park for a warm up before a short jog through the lovely tree lined Walpole to meet Grant and Vanessa who were ready to show us the area we needed to tackle and give us a little health and safety on hammer useage. Remy wasted no time and got stuck straight in with the hammering action and everyone else donned their gloves (some fancier than others!) and a weapon of choice to get chopping!

Focusing on the meadow area we worked away for a solid 40 minutes, so with 17 of us (including Vanessa and Grant who joined our efforts!) that’s over 11 hours worth of hard graft! We filled over 8 (highly stacked!) wheelbarrows of brambles as well as countless arm fulls and cleared a huge area, what a fantastic result that will really help this community garden!

Just time for a quick group photo where we all striked and pose and Sam gifted us with the pun for the report! But the hard work didn’t end there… as we had a short run this week we needed to get some extra fitness in so off to Walpole for some partner core work! A mix of leg lifts, plank variations and sit ups (to varying degrees of success!) hopefully gave you all a good work out to end the evening!

Next week we’ll do it all again and hope to see you there!