What a great night to test our funky new lights!

Thanks to our brilliant GoodGym Central team, we have a set of brilliant portable lights that we made use of tonight for our visit to Newcastle Eagles Community Garden. We lend a hand to Neil and the fantastic Eagles team once a month to keep the gardens ship shape with weeding and clearing, making the entrance to the arena even more welcoming.

Look at how great our photos are! Are we ready for our close up? YES WE ARE!

We started the night with announcements and celebrations including our very own Andrew smashing his first ever Marathon at the beautiful and brutal Kielder Marathon weekend where I am lucky enough to work on the event delivery team. We had runners in action in all of the distances, you didn't have to look far to see a glorious red GG tshirt. Well done everyone, including those who volunteered in pretty grim conditions yesterday. You are all so brilliant.

After a quick warm up with everyone's sweetie game, it was off to the Eagles with Charlotte leading the walkers and Paul and me taking the runners. We love this uncomplicated run that takes in some of the iconic Blaydon Race route- just not quite as far! There was a lot of chat tonight and some great catching up for a few members of the group who have been missing in action (work) for a little while.. welcome back Paul!

Neil is a great task organiser and he met us bang on time with tools and a high-vis for everyone while Nick got straight in with getting himself in charge of the wheelbarrow and looking very important. Our task tonight was simple and therapeutic, remove the weeds from two main sections of the car park garden to reveal the flowers buried somewhere beneath. We loved getting stuck in and making the area clearer in just 40 minutes before a super quick tidy-up afterwards. Neil reminded us of the difference we are making with this task in time spent as well as money saved for the Eagles that they can spend on other things.

With so many tired legs in the group tonight we had a mellow-ish fitness session the grounds of the Eagles Community Arena with some activation and movement drills to wake up and stretch tired calves, quads and hamstrings before our run back. Some brilliant and not so brilliant coordination was on show and I am sure you will all be practising them at home this week!

Do you have some time to spare for a daytime Community Mission this week? We'd love it if you were able to lend a hand at the Smartworks Sale on Thursday afternoon if you can. Just look for Maddy if you are arriving a little after the start time. There's also a mission this weekend for Newcastle Parks on Saturday and another on Sunday ... who's up for a treble?!

We are back at Elliott House next week for more gardening and good things, so hopefully we will see you then.

Happy running and walking!

Anji x