11 people ran 7km to weed, tidy and do some planting for Stanhope Hall Community and Well-being Centre

Tonight, we welcomed Tom and Marlon to the GoodGym Brum crew. Thanks for coming guys and well done on your first GoodGym run. Front and back markers were sorted, I led the way, with Chan back marking, so off we went.

Once arriving at the centre the task was to do a bit of weeding and general tidying followed by planting some lettuces. Everyone mucked in weeding the soil, then Karin and Laura planted the lettuces, while some of the group carried on having a tidy up.

Chan and his big hose

Chan then to his excitement had the job of watering the garden and that was it job done! After Monica thanked us all for our help, Chan took the obligatory selfie and we were on our way.

Short fitness sess

As we had quite a long run to and from our task location tonight the fitness session was a very quick blast, just two Kenyan hill efforts. Basically, running hard up the hill, but also running hard down the hill, with the idea that you naturally recover on the down. Neal and Marlon showed great work at the front, Chloe pushed hard all the way to the top and the group of Laura, Morwenna and Karin helped each other all the way showing great determination.

Once done, we were on our way back to base. Remember next week we will be having our first GoodGym Brum 'social' after the run so please sign up here sign up here.

9 people ran 6.5km to tidy the canal towpath

On a rather wet and cold night we had 9 hardy souls looking to do some good. It was great to see Lee back after his first session last week and Phil back off his holiday. Once the introductions were done our ‘wombles’ got their ‘tidy bags’ out and off we went down to our adopted part of the canal. We split up into 3 groups each clearing part of the towpath, before meeting up in the middle to leave our bags to be picked up by the canal and river trust.

Interval training

On the way back we did an interval session, completing 6 heart rate soaring efforts. Phil showed us his 400m runner speed once again by leading the way. James, Eva and Shalini showed great effort and really worked hard. I took about 186 pictures, most were terrible, but what can I say you were all running to fast!

what no wall squats?

Once the intervals were complete we took a steady run back towards our base, Lee leading the way showing us a new route to leave the canal. Just before this we had a ‘quick’ or not so in my case selfie (we were missing Chan ‘the selfie king’ tonight, due to his weekend half marathon exploits) and we were on our way! On the way back we called in on our ‘second home’, St Paul’s square for a little fitness session. Everyone knows how much I love a wall squat so of course I didn’t want to disappoint and so on we got with them, 3 of the beauties to be precise, Carol and John held a great squat and you could see how keen Garry is to get that ‘Jennifer Aniston esk peachy bum’ putting in top effort to maintain his squat! After each wall squat we had a rest…… pull the other one! it was straight into some lung bursting tuck jumps…….and then we were done, well virtually, we just had the little jog-a-log back to 1000 Trades.

Next week we will be out doing good again, it would be great if you could join us sign up here