Dashing Through The Fog

13 amazing #GGwinterwarriors came out in the cold and foggy evening, ran 4 k to deliver leaflets for Age UK Exeter and had lots of fun!

A very warm welcome to Naarani and Chloe who joined us for the first time! It was great having you along and we would love to see you soon again! Congratulations to Helen who has now completed 20 good deeds! Great work!

We started our evening with some warm-up exercises outside the Phoenix (our brilliant starting point). Our first exercise involved checking how well our body clocks work. We closed our eyes and jogged on the spot until we thought 1 minute was up and then sat down. It was harder than it sounds and the guesses for when 1 minute was up varied from 23 seconds to 57! After some more jogging in circles, high knees, heel kicks, lunges and more we were ready to start running!

Our very Christmassy Lisa back marked as we made our way over to St Leonards, our task location for the evening. It was lovely to once again run through the town centre which was beautifully lit up by the Christmas lights and also great to hear everyone chatting and laughing as we ran.

Our task this evening was to complete the leafleting for Age UK Exeter that we made a start on a few weeks ago. Like the GoodGym, Age UK Exeter works hard to combat loneliness and isolation among the elderly. Something that many elderly particularly miss is having someone to share a meal with and Age UK Exeter is therefor running a campaign called #EatTogetherExeter. What a fantastic task helping them get the word out about this!

As it was a very dark and foggy evening and we didn’t want to get spread out over too big of an area, we divided our group into two. One half leafleted whilst the other group worked super hard on some Sally Squats. We then made our way to a new area and swapped the groups over so that no-one missed out on the brilliant squats! I hope you loved them just as much as I do!

Such fantastic effort both delivering the leaflets and smashing the squats! You guys are the best!

Once the task was completed we made our way back to Princess Hay where we did some party games for our fitness session. It's Christmas after all! I think it is safe to say you can get very fit doing party games too.. Especially when they involve Black Burpees, Red Run-Card Challenges and Tinsel-Tag!

All that laughing definitely worked your core muscles too!

We then jogged over to the Phoenix for some stretches followed by some refreshments in the bar; a perfect way to end the last session of the year.

It's been fantastic to start up the GoodGym in Exeter and brilliant to see the group grow and become a real community! You are all part of that and I want to give you all a HUGE shout out for all the brilliant stuff you have achieved over the last few months! I can't wait for more in 2020! Lots of GG love to you all, have a great Christmas and a happy New Year!

Dates for the diary

• No group runs over Christmas (24th and 31st).

• In January we start off in style with a community mission on the 4th, doing a take over of the marshalling and volunteering for Exeter Riverside Park Run. What a fantastic community mission! Join us!

• First group run next year will be on Tuesday 7th January. We will run and deliver leaflets for Ride On, a small charity that works to make Exeter healthier and cleaner by offering bike maintenance courses, cycle training and cycle route information. It will be a great run, the task owner will join us for the full run session and there will be some little surprise prices at the end! Sign up here

• There will also be a community mission on Saturday 11th January, helping HospiceCare with a Christmas Tree Collection. There will be info about that soon on the website.