Tonight we completed a lovely Community Mission in Exhibition Park, Newcastle.

Thankfully the weather was actually nice for once (it normally always rains, especially when litter picking!)

It was good to be joined by Tom, Sam and Sarah. Thanks to Thomas and Sam
for bringing litter pickers along, this made a huge difference and we were very grateful!

It was lovely to welcome Sarah back as she completed her third GoodGym good deed and first Community Mission. Go and give her a well deserved cheer!

We met at the main entrance of the park and had a nice stroll through the park, collecting litter and having a good chat.

We had a good laugh, as I'd hurriedly brought/picked up a roll of black bin bags for tonight from the Supermarket. They turned out to be enormous (240 litres according to the label!) but they were very useful!

I'm sure we will be returning again soon.

You'd be forgiven for looking through our photos tonight and thinking all we did was mess about and play in Exhibition Park. There was some of that between all of the standard GoodGym Newcastle awesomeness

There was a big group to welcome four- yes FOUR- new runners to the family! Welcome Jack, Tom, Tom and Raff. You are now fully fledged GoodGym members who have completed group run greatness!

Tonight's group run was a bit of everything: silly warm up games, GoodGym leaflet drop on the way followed by a huge litter pick and fitness session in Exhibition Park! The big challenge was to complete an alphabet of litter. And no Dan, I'm not accepting FETUS for F because you found an egg, or X for Extra Chewing gum. Some interesting litter was uncovered including two bike frames, a seat, part of a fridge and general bottles, cans and crisp packets left over from another scorching weekend in the park. Some people (hello Paul, Amy and Carol-Anne) took some time out to hang around on the many climbing frames on offer as the task came to a close.

What everyone wants when its 26 degrees on an open space occupied by cows is to complete a 1K time trial so we popped over to the Town Moor to do just that. The cows were very accommodating and happy to mooooove out of the way while we warmed up with our (my) favourite drills.

At the sound of the whistle the runners were off! Storming across the moooooor in some blistering times as they tried to outdo one an udder on the way back to the finish. Kudos to Andy who was first in 3:12 and Sarah, first lady in 3:47.

It was back to pastures old (sorry, I will stop this now) for a good stretch and high fives on another excellent evening of doing good things, getting fit and loving our city.

Well done everyone, I might see you at the community mission Or at our next Group Run

Happy Running! Anji x

I'm going to be bold, and write in bold, and say right here and now that tonight was my favourite GoodGym group run so far There I said it.

Tonight we ran via a few photo opportunity detours to the fantastic new charity project Smart Works Newcastle who provide clothing and coaching to women to support getting them into work in our city. In just 8 weeks, Smart Works have helped to get an incredible 15 women back into secure employment. Everyone arrived feeling inspired after the visit from the local press during our warm up, and conversation topic of hidden talents on the way there! We can basically set up a pretty good rock band and a football team in the next week or so if we wanted. It was great to use this time to break the ice for our three new runners. Welcome to the family Sarah, Michael and Fiona!

Michelle from Smart Works wasted no time in getting us to work with the tasks of:

Sorting clothing into sizes, sorting out the underwear boxes, tidying up the coat hangers, building new clothing rails, steaming items to hang up, sorting donations out into sizes and piles, eating lollies, dressing a mannequin, occasional dressing up in donations and creating fancy jewellery displays.

Hidden talents were once again unveiled and notably we found out that Dan knows a lot about types of heels.

It was one of those tasks where every room I went into was filled with laughter.

I will never unsee David in his "summer look" of a dusty pink off-the-shoulder crop top, and will never forget Michael helping Paul into his fitted jacket.

I was super impressed at the speed at which Team Flat Pack got the clothing rails built, before swooping in and getting stuck into another task! I don't even think I own a screwdriver. The task I was most jealous of tonight was the steam crew, steaming clothing to hang up. I have once straightened a tshirt out using my hairdryer though, which is kind of the same.

We found a cool little spot behind the MEA House building for the fitness task tonight which was a numbers game of strength exercises where once again all I could hear was laughter. I don't know if it was the fact we were going for food and drinks afterwards that kept people going but the energy was amazing! I'm already excited for next week's group run! Sign up here

There's a Community Mission this Saturday, the details are here And don't forget if you're mission verified, there is the first chance to do a mission this weekend so check your dashboard.

Have a super week with loads of HAPPY RUNNING, Anji x