Spray and pray

24 GoodGymers ran 7km to help The Church of St Michael and St George, White City

January and the January Challenge are over, but this didn't stop 23 wonderful GoodGymers from joining me to lend a hand at a BRAND NEW TASK tonight! The evening was decidedly mild for February and many decided to get their legs out and rock the shorts 🩳.

For some reason, here at GoodGym H&F we often seem to have runners with the same name, which both helps and hinders with remembering names and nicknames! - the official term is 'homonymous'.

There was no excuse to forget one name tonight...a big welcome along to Beth who joined us tonight for her first GoodGym H&F group run.

News, news, news

1. January Challenge 2020: H&F's final totals...a whopping 160 good deeds completed and 1897km run. 16th place in the 'Gold' League. Smashed it! Well done team 🙌.

2. Upcoming events: Sat 8th Feb at 10am - Richmond Park 5km & 10km and Sun 9th Feb at 9.30am - Wimbledon's Second Sunday Five.

3. Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sun 17th May: you'll have a great day out cheering on fellow runners and earn yourself some nice freebies, these include a free entry to a future race and a t-shirt! For all the details, click here.

AND FINALLY....

1. Team Nash are running the London Marathon for the brilliant charity, Barnardo's who do fantastic work to protect and support vulnerable children and young people. Please click here to sponsor them.

Team Nash ran with Daley Thompson at the weekend and is also a fan of my favourite brain and body warm-up which involves different moves for each number...I learnt from the best, we always hang out at weekends 😉

Pray it by ear

Tonight's brand new task was at The Church of St Michael and St George, White City, a nice long run to get our legs turning. Following a quick-warm up which included high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs and lunges. Heart rates raised we set off towards White City. All the traffic lights seemed against us, but they handily enabled us to regroup. With lots of pedestrian dodging inside and around Shepherds Bush Green we happily headed onto Wood Lane which was far clearer and wider.

There was also a perfectly placed long wall which allowed for the weekly wall sit to be completed - hooray!

"I know where we're going. It's a left, then a right at QPR's stadium and up" - Tom

With Tom sounding very assured of where we were heading he took the lead. Katie and Andrew had timed their 'running lates' to perfection and met us as we headed up towards the church.

The state of pray

Church located we headed inside through the side entrance and were greeted by the vicar, Ben. Ben welcomed everyone in and explained all the jobs that needed doing tonight:

• Clean the kitchen area
• Clean both sets of toilets
• Clean in the vestibules
• Tidy the crèche area
• Clean all the windows
• Polish the brass plaques
• A garden litter-pick
• Hoover - lots of it with trusty Henry!

The team split into lots of smaller groups to tackle the list of jobs.

Like two pees in a pod

Katie and Catriona did their best Kim and Aggy impression in the toilets and left them sparkling clean!

So crèche & clean

In the crèche area, there was lots of tidying of stuffed animals, books and toys, and cleaning of the windows by Eloise, Sarah, Sophie and Milla.

Alice become very well acquited with Henry as she set to work hoovering the carpets and around the chairs, finding Zanoubia's locker key in the process - a fab find! Analiese was on polishing duty, putting the Brasso to work on the brass plaque so that it would be lovely and shiny again.

Matt stepped up to tackle the window cleaning on the large windows in the hall, with Andrew kindly holding the ladder to provide rock solid support.

Also in the hall area, Zanoubia cleaned all the fingerprints from the doors, while Lucy hoovered, Chi tidied and Biscuits cleaned in the other toilets...there definitely wasn't any childish behaviour involving hoovers here....

Mary, Luis and Beth set to work cleaning the kitchen area, with Luis ensuring the basin was the cleanest one you'd ever set eyes upon! Mary and Beth also ensured all the plants in the church had their thirst quinched with a good watering.

A litter pick of this, and a litter pick of that

While the others were hard at work inside, 'team bags' - Cookie, Helen, Marissa, Tom and Maddie (sorry for the name team!) - were working hard outside to clear-up all the litter and a bit of a "Brucie Bonus", a quick weed in the garden area....how to pray your cards right!

No altaring this photo!

Amazingly, in just half an hour all the jobs were completed! All that was left to do was to pose for Chi as he took this week's team photo. Boom! Task complete.

We said our goodbyes and thankyous to Ben and headed outside. Despite it feeling that no one was heading back to base with me when asked who was heading or peeling off on the way, many of the group ran the quicker and more direct 3km run back. Here we were treated to a stretch off led by Tom, in the words of Mo, "that's lovely that!".

Thank you all for coming along and for all your terrific efforts tonight team. Have a great rest of your week! Sign up for next week's run here. Don't forget it's the monthly social following the run!

Shoutouts 📣

• Thank you to Matt for tonight's pun, Chi for his photography skills, Helen for backmarking and to Tom for leading the cool down!
• Well done to those who did the wonderfully muddy 'Splash & Dash' on Wimbledon Common and the Regents Park 10km!
• Good luck to those parkrunning and racing this weekend.