16 Westminster GoodGymers ran 7k to One Big Family Homeless Charity in Victoria to make the food for the evenings Soup kitchen.

On a beautiful Spring evening we welcomed a flock of Goodgym Newbies for their maiden outing.

After a introduction in the New Balance store we headed South through the sights, sounds and many many people who were out and about in Central London.

Weaving our way past Palaces and through parks we made our way 3.5k to Ebury Estate where we met up with One Big Family legend Mike!

A quick wash of the hands and we orchestrated an efficient and compact production line producing 3 loaves of Jam sandwiches, 3 loaves of Cheese sandwiches, 36 buns of Vegetarian Ham, cut up 150 slices of pizza bread and 50 slices of cake. All bagged up, allergy dotted and stacked up in 25 minutes!!

A quick wash up and we were off back through the slightly quieter streets back to base. Picking up the pace at the front and maintaining a steady rhythm at the back smashed through the first 2k of the run back before ** Unleashing Fury** on the Green Park drag with some powerful 500m efforts from everyone all the way up the slope to the gates of recovery!!

A relaxed jog back from there was well earned and a stretch and a clap and we were done!!

Great effort tonight! Hope to see you along for the run next week! Be great to have you along to the Special Easter Egg give away where we will run around town handing out Spring cheer to the homeless and youngest kids at St Andrews Youth Club. If you are able to bring along a donation or 2 no matter how big or small it will be great!!

Smooth Running

Joel

18 GoodGymers ran 3k to Rhythams of Life Homeless Charity to sort, order, lift and shift 3 tonnes of donations

Starting with a flurry of DBS checks to get stuck into Missions and Coach runs we set off on our bob and weave run from Oxford Street to Rhythams of Life in Leicester Square.

1.5k of forward running with a couple of cheeky back street weaves and a whole lot of lateral dodging we arrived at the amazing building that houses Rhythams of Life to meet Farris.

After a couple of minutes of heart stopping wait for me we went in to tackle the monster pile of donations that we needed to sort, order, lift and shift.

The task was a monster and almost hard to see how to start but we did and smashed a GoodGym size dent in it!! Sorting everything from toiletries to Suits we had our work cut out and we labelled our way to success using every second of the 50 minutes we spent there!!

The final flurry to move all the ordered and labelled clothing down into the basement so we can dominate the second half of the Clothing Mountain next week!!

A big thank you from Farris, a dose of hand sanitizer and a team picture and we were off on the 1.5k dodgems run back to base!

Arriving back dead on 8pm a quick static stretch out and we were done!!

Be great to see you al again next week!! So please sign up and come along to tackle the clothing mountain!!

Smooth Running

Joel

*We ran to help a charity sort through a whole stack of donations, saving them days of work! *

So lovely to see ours runners this week, some fresh from success at the Larmer Tree races - a definite racing bug is going around at the moment!

This week we were tasked with helping Hope Housing charity sort (literally) a shed load of donations ready for them to be distributed across the charity's various sites.

Our run took us through Boscombe Chine Gardens, there was a superb misty atmosphere in the air and it was lovely to have a dry and lighter evening - Spring is Springing!!

We headed through some residential streets and arrived on St Swithuns road to be greeted by a charity worker, Mark. Hope Housing really does fab work across our town. Providing shelter and indeed homes for those in need. Not only that, they support individuals with their health, wellbeing and getting back on their feet and into work.

We'd helped Mark out before and were very pleased to see our table tennis effort still going strong! This week we were greeted with mountains of textiles to sort and bag ready for distribution. Mark gave us fantastic instructions and we began sorting.

We were amazed at the amount of donated stock - it just kept on coming. But the group worked hard to sort it, bag it and also had fun rummaging through the retro duvet covers and wierd and wonderful clothing items. Daryl even got to take home a transformers duvet set (he claimed it was for a friend, hehe!).

Big big night for Caprice, who got to experience her first ever 'chain' - we formed a chain to load all the bagged stock back into the shed. Mark thanked us and told us it would have taken him FOUR DAYS without our help - amazing job GoodGym runners - thank you and well done!

Next week we have a longer run so be prepared to work on pace and stamina - see you then!