Balance of power

It was laundry day in Wandsworth last night, as 26 GoodGymers met at the Battersea Arts Centre ready to help out Love to Learn - a project aimed at supporting local young people and families from refugee backgrounds.

But first we welcomed some lovely new faces – hello Dagmar, Lulu and James. Nice to see Chris who was visiting us from Camden as well. We had some huge shout outs this week. A round of applause to Jack, who not only helped out at missions on both Saturday and Sunday but also is smashing the Wandsworth leader board with a huge 10 good deeds so far in September. Way to go! Well done to Lucy and Sophie who are not far behind him. We also wished Jack and Tom the best of luck for their half marathon in Cardiff this weekend – we’ll be spurring the whole GoodGym team on from here in London!

We were under some serious time pressure to pick up a load of laundry from Love to Learn and get it to the launderette, which was staying open an extra ten minutes just for us lucky lot. So with the wind behind us and the Challenge Anneka theme music in our heads, we covered the mile to the charity in record time. One human chain, and a quick pick up later, most of the team were back pounding the pavement to the launderette whilst Asifa, Lulu, Jack, Tom, Roshan and Dagmar stayed behind to do some tasks.

We reached the laundrette as the owner was standing on the doorstop with his cycle helmet on his head ready to go, and all but threw ourselves over the threshold. It was with a giant sigh of relief that, free of bags of washing, we made our way to a darkening Battersea Park for our fitness session.

Whilst waiting for the rest of the team to join us after their marathon cleaning session, we played a quick game of British Bulldog, with Sarah emerging as champion on the first match, and Matthew reigning supreme the second time. Then the fitness session. It was always going to be a hard one, but with a few ABC (agility, balance, coordination) exercises, some intervals, the plank challenge and a monster relay later, it still wasn’t over. We split ourselves into three groups, and set off back to the BAC, stopping at our favourite hill for a couple of hill sprints to round off the evening. And despite some colourful language, everybody faced their nemesis and smashed it.

Of course, the night wasn’t over without the weekly CoRUNdrum. It seemed fair enough – what stone fruit sits atop the towers at St Paul’s Cathedral? Pineapples. However, there was some dispute over the wording, with the upshot that Will is going to come up with a better London based quiz question next week. Good Luck, Will, make it a good un’!

It was Sophie’s birthday (Happy hill sprint birthday, Sophie!) this week, so we all took ourselves off to the bar for some cake and drinks to finish off a tough but fun evening. Special hat tip to Dave and Sarah who both made it to the session despite both having taken international flights that very day. That’s commitment, well done team! Congrats also to Kylee who nailed her fitness goal in record time, and to Daniel who ran his first parkrun this weekend in a great time. Keep it up everyone.

See you next week for a longer run to Tooting – sign up here you lovely lot:

https://www.goodgym.org/group_runs/tooting-charity-needs-our-help