Stat's How You Do It: hills and biscuits at Gifford House

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Tonight we started our Group Run with a bunch of amazing stats courtesy of our resident statistician Andrew to motivate us on a cold and windy night in the Toon. Hold on to your hats, these are some great numbers! As we approach our 6 month anniversary and before we ran tonight, we had racked up:

• 641 Good Deeds
• 33 good deeds JUST by Carol Anne, meaning as a solo GoodGym runner she accounts for 5% of Good Deeds at GoodGym Newcastle!
• Total Group Run distance: 2644.5km
• In just six months, in distance we have travelled all the way to Istanbul in relay (swim and run) or 1/4 way around the moon.

It was also our 11th Changing Lives task and a new project for us at Gifford House. Is that enough numbers for now?

It was the first time we've run over the High Level Bridge and as if by magic the police had closed it off for us (nothing to do with the broken down bus, honest) and what a lovely trot across it was! Up the hill, via the high street in Gateshead we managed to stay together, shaking off the Monday blues after a paired game in the warm up to welcome three new runners to the family. Massive welcome Hannah, Chloe and Ellen!

Our destination was another Changing Lives project, Gifford House. Gifford House provides accommodation with 24/7 support for males ages 18+. There are 11 bedrooms and they can live for up to 2 years at Gifford during which time they are encouraged to get involved with training and preparation to employment. Our tasks tonight were:

• Kitchen deep clean including the oven
• Vacuum the stairs, living room and corridors
• Plant bulbs and tidy/weed the garden
• Living room clean up including skirting boards, furniture and shelving.

With 25 of us getting stuck in the task seemed to fly by, one of the residents commenting,

"There are more than 3 times the usual amount of people in this house! It's unreal!"

I have to give a special mention to Liz tonight for commitment to her task as after cleaning the kitchen floor, she realised she had forgotten her jacket, and after tip toeing back through the kitchen, returned to clean it again. Top marks for effort Liz!

We are always spoiled with drinks and snacks from Changing Lives and after dragging Michael away from the custard creams we were thanked by Changing Lives staff who told us the difference we made was huge.

"I just have to say, I think what you all do is amazing"

It was a lovely easy run back down the hill via more emergency services (fire engines this time if anyone's playing 999 bingo!) before we found a spot to complete everybody's (nobody's) favourite fitness session THE DREADED HILL REPEATS SESSION Hills are great. They make you work hard, elevate your heart rate, build endurance and stamina and make you feel epic. It just always takes a little convincing! Group hills were completed first followed by an epic Kenyan Hill Sprint which was won by our self-named Broken Man, now named King of the Hills Nick What a way to celebrate your tenth good deed and return from injury. Bravo, King Nick.

So that's all for another week of Group Run GoodGymness. There's a community mission this Saturday at Nunsmoor Park which you can sign up for here and then we have our first school task next Monday for the group run where we will be doing a spot of painting, so don't wear your best gear for that one!

Have a great week, Anji x