7 runners met to help keep their local riverside clean

Following months of on-line only meetings it was a real tonic (sorry Elizabeth there was no gin to go with it!) to meet and greet in person and to get the litter- pickers out again. After a socially distanced parade on Bishop Bridge we enjoyed foraging beer tins in the undergrowth while chatting and catching up with how we’d all been spending our time in lockdown. At the end strawberries and gooseberries were dispensed to all.

Special mentions go to Bobby, who was back from a few weeks bobbing in the sea off the US, and to Robert, who paid his respects to Gas Hill as a warm-up for the task.

(Thanks Bill for writing this up.)

This is on behalf of Catherine Dugdale.

Last night saw the turn of Catherine to host our weekly quiz. After a good catch up and some bird song from Andy's mic, we began with a round on animals where we were very impressed by the hippo with its red sweat! Darren later taught us that they also have pink wee! Next round was cartoons and Elizabeth scored maximum points, remembering all of the names of the seven dwarves.

Then on to something different-- an isolation scavenger hunt. First back with their made item, metal thing, CD, snack and toilet roll were Jenny and Andy, quickly followed by the others except Andy who was debating over his favourite CD.

The picture round was a little logo quiz and then some lyrics from some very famous songs. But isn't it annoying when you recognise them but can't get the tune!

To finish, we had a little round of who can shove the most stuff down their trousers in 30 seconds. Helen stormed this with 30 items down her trousers including a pen knife and some matches!

With an overall score of 61, Helen takes the crown this week. Thank you everyone for being such good sports.

The new year continues with a boom with another fantastic turnout.

A big welcome to several new runners this week in Lillian, Lisa, Sirilak, Chen and Fatima.

Janice was backrunner and Hayley photographer, which was a great help as I could split the group during the task and run with half of them.

The milestones this week were Janice & Raffy completing their 10th good deeds.

We had another very productive task this week. It was a 3km each-way run to the Norwich Foodbank, a great organisation who always welcome our help to keep them on top of things. With the influx of donations we needed the influx of GoodGymers!

It was quite chaotic at times I'm not going to lie haha. As we couldn't fit 40+ in the warehouse we paired up again so one person would be helping out while the other would do a little running/walking loop... it pretty much worked ;-)

As always, time flew by, especially with the added running/walking included but we made a massive impact none the less and got plenty done.

There was the added challenge of Grapes Hill we had to conquer towards the end of the run back.

There's an additional Group Run this Saturday as we visit EACH Charity Shop and Monday's Group Run we are visiting Ellacombe Care Home. There will be a walk option at both of them.

2020 is here and GoodGym Norwich is back to do more amazing good deeds this year.

The 1st Group Run of the year was to do a litter pick around the Riverside area of Norwich, something I'd noticed had got quite messy over the festive period. A big thank you to Voluntary Norfolk who lent us litter pickers and high vis jackets through the LUMi platform.

Becky and George were taking part in their 1st GoodGym ventures.

A big wow to Beks who was completing her 100th good deed! What a way to start the year.

Thank you to Katy for being back runner and Sandra for being walk leader.

After a gentle 1.5km jog/walk down to Riverside, the GoodGymers assembled in small groups and armed themselves with a litter picker, gloves and a bin bag and headed off to make the area much cleaner... which they sure did!

After 40 minutes, we had many bags of rubbish that Morrisons kindly disposed of for us.

A great little task to start 2020 with.

Next week we have a longer run as we visit Baby Bank Norfolk.

Tonight was a special occasion as Liz was completing her 50th good deed and Robert his 100th good deed!!! What an achievement :-)

Mike and Kain were taking part in their first GoodGym encounters... your first steps in achieving the above.

Thanks to Bill & Elizabeth (who was completing her unofficial milestone of 150 good deeds) for being backrunners and Hayley for her amazing photography skills.

Tonight's task was to visit Norwich Food Bank, in what is a very busy and important time of year for them so giving a good 16 hours of volunteering time to them is invaluable.

After a much needed warm-up in the cold (buy hey, it didn't rain for once!) we set off on the 3.25km trip with the topic of discussion being 'what is your favourite Xmas food?'

The main task was to create Xmas Bags for families in need during the festive season. The WI had kindly donated all of the bags and then our job was filling them with all the essential festive food.

There was also some other date sorting to do with other food items.

The evening was finished with a brownie or mince pie from Robert followed up by a trip to the pub... if Carlsberg did Monday evenings.

Next week we're Making Mince Pies at The Feed for Keeping Abreast.

A visit to Norwich Foodbank is always a very rewarding task and for this we had a whopping 36 GoodGymers come out to attend... in the rain yet again!

A big welcome to 3 new runners in Esther, Jess and Andrew, I hope you all enjoyed your 1st GoodGym experience :-)

A thank you to Bill and Elizabeth for being back runners.

After a warm-up that included (everyone's favourite) Bear Crawls, we set out on the soggy 3km outward journey. As there were so many of us (and you all know how much I love Health & Safety...) I put everyone in pairs so that one person can be in the warehouse while the other does a running loop, then they swap over. So as well as doing good, everyone got to run a little further than they expected to ;-)

Keith, the warehouse manager, had a mixture of things for us to do, which included: date sorting tins of beans, sorting out 2020 food items, weighing crates of new items, sorting Xmas items, sorting nappies, preparing Xmas boxes, sorting coffee/tea/hot chocolate items as well as some other jobs.

After 40 minutes of doing these tasks and running in between, we set off on our way back.

Helping with Norwich Foodbank for Christmas hampers

If you'd like to help the foodbank with their donations for the Xmas boxes, they're in need of the following items:

• Tins/cartons of tomatoes
• Tinned vegetables
• Long-life fruit juice
• UHT Milk
• Pasta sauce
• Rice pudding/custard
• Instant mash
• Tinned fruit
• Tea
• Tinned meat
• Tinned fish
• Christmas treats - chocolate/sweets/crisps etc

If you bring them along to Goodgym on a Monday night, we'll collate any items together and make sure they get to the foodbank. If you can do this by the end of November this will help with distribution in time for Christmas!

Reminder of the following:

Parkour Social Jump is this Wednesday.

GoodGym Norwich Xmas Meal is on Wednesday 11th December.

If you want to join the Secret Santa you need to sign up by lunchtime today!

Next week's Group Run is a Games Night @ The Hamlet Adult's Centre.