9 GoodGymers from lots of different boroughs made their way to Acton on a Saturday afternoon to help City Harvest sort through their surplus food donations!

Different from traditional food banks which generally provide long life items, the food we sorted at City Harvest is all fresh short life surplus food donated from places such restaurants, supermarkets, wholesalers, hotels and caterers. It needs to be turned around FAST in order to make it out to other charities and organisations that can use it to help feed those who need it most.

Where does the food go?

City Harvest delivers all the donated surplus food to organisations that provide meals to vulnerable people including homeless shelters, soup kitchens, after school programs, centres for veterans, and organisations that assist people with alcohol or drug addictions.

As a group we spent just over 2 hours sorting large deliveries of food into smaller crates to go out to lots of different places, a couple of us even went out on a delivery to help unload at the other end and see where all the food ends up!

Lots of us were shocked as to how much food there was that would otherwise go to waste if places like City Harvest didn't exist to help redistribute it

Everyone left feeling like we'd made a huge difference, there was so much to do and it was great to see all that potential food waste go to those who need it. We will be looking to work with City Harvest on a regular basis going forward and will have a monthly first Saturday of the month slot to help at the warehouse like we did today, the next one is already up on the website so sign up now!

21 of us weren’t fazed by the weather (well maybe a little bit!) and came out to run and help at Ealing Foodbank!

2 new runners in our ranks this week, welcome to Sophie and Bernice! I hope that next time you come the weather is kinder to us but major kudos for not letting it put you off last night!

Lots of news this week:

It’s the last few days of the January challenge! Last nights incredible turnout sees us up to 126 good deeds and 1340km, so it’s the last push now! Get out and run as much as you can before Thursday and if you’re free come along to an extra session this week. Make sure you’re Strava is linked to your GoodGym profile for it all to count, do this in your account settings on your GoodGym login!

• Plog tonight with Jenni in Ealing Broadway! 6-7pm from the normal starting place, details and sign up here.

• Plog tomorrow morning at with Michael, 10am-11am from the normal starting place, details and sign up here.

Right now for the main event! After huddling inside for as long as possible we ventured out into the cold/sleet/rain/snow and got straight down to business, just a quick head count and name check and we were off, as quickly as we could to try and get warm!

Once at The Food Bank we were met by Hillary who had lots of jobs that needed doing. We quickly distributed ourselves around the building taking on whatever we could to help.

Not a shred of doubt

Adam (the most inappropriately dressed person for this weather I have ever seen!) and Chris took particular pleasure in getting to work shredding a load of unneeded paperwork, whilst others took to sorting food in the main centre. Shan and Bernice were team clean and a few of us took it in turns to brave (the now worsening weather) to litter pick nearby to the site.

Once we’d done all we could, Hilary explained a little bit more about how it all works and how they distribute the food out to collection points were those who need it can collect. It was great to hear more about this invaluable resource and help us understand how our input and the generosity of others really helps.

We normally like to finish up with a fitness session but I wasn’t subjecting anyone to that in those conditions! Just a run back and straight home to warm up. I hope you can all feel your fingers and toes again!

Next week we do it all again, same time and place with a different task! Take a look at that and all the other upcoming group runs in Ealing here!

We stacked up the good deeds and the shelves last night as 27 AMAZING runners came out to help at Ealing Food Bank. This included 9 lovely new additions with Sophie, Aurelia, Jane, Vicky, Chris J, Chris B, Gemma, Perrine & Mohand all kicking off the new year in style by beginning their GoodGym journey. Welcome everyone!

You butter believe it!

With everyone full of beans (and in some cases peanut butter) and ready to raise their pulses (literally) we started with a quick warm up and fitness session on Haven Green. We began with some simple drills before turning up the tempo with some running circle drills before seeing how far our legs could curry us to the task.

A lot of the group had bought donations down with them to give on the night but fortuNUTely the many jars of peanut butter we had for offering hadn’t weighed us down too much and we made it to the task ready and raring to go! We were met by the lovely Hillary who after the initial shock of the number of us gave us lots of different tasks to do around the warehouse! With such a large turnout we were crammed in like sardines and soon it was a feeding frenzy of shelf stacking, food sorting and cleaning in every aisle.

The time soon came to make like a banana and split and we headed back to base for a quick stretch and debrief on the nights events.

Hopefully the extra puns littered throughout the report have whet your appetite and given you food for thought for next time when you could have your pun in lights on the report.

A special mention to Michael Kidd this week for leading the run and helping co-orindate the task, also his 99th good deed with GoodGym so next time we get to present him with the BIG 100 T-SHIRT!

As always a massive thank you to everyone who came tonight and hopefully see you all next time!