GoodGym Nails a Feet of Endurance

All runners know the importance of healthy, pain free feet, so it was a great pleasure to “feeture” a job for Age Concern’s affordable footcare service as last night’s task. This new service needed a bit of promotion in the area and what better way than to call on GoodGym’s expert leaflet delivery skills.

So last night our sole objective was to push as many leaflets as we could through doors in the Deighton area of Huddersfield, well that and have as much fun as we could doing it of course! Following a few leafleting jobs this summer GoodGym Huddersfield are now getting pretty good at this kind of task and never cease to be surprised at just how many leaflets we can post in an hour, not to mention the number of miles we rack up running up and down hundreds of garden paths!

We had eight great runners in the group last night. GoodGym Huddersfield regulars Kati Law, Ben Godfrey, Louise Galvin, Meg Deacon, Mark Donnellan and myself were joined by first timers Peter Phillips and Victoria Knight-Phillips. It turns out Victoria had been an early supporter of GoodGym Huddersfield, being involved in the initial preparation and set-up work over 12 months ago, so it was great to welcome her along to enjoy the fruits of her efforts.

After last week’s wet one it was great to be able to enjoy a proper sunny summer evening, and following a warm-up of our legs (and brains) with a round of “Jump In, Jump Out, Jump Left, Jump Right” we were off on the run. Heading towards Deighton way gave us plenty of opportunity for some off-road running action, both along the canal towpath and up the climb in Riddings Wood.

By the time we reached Age UK’s centre on Keldregate we were raring to get posting, and I was raring to get the 2 Kg’s of leaflets out of out my rucksack and into the hands of the eager GoodGymmers. Working in two teams working opposite sides of the street soon posting flyers through as many doors as we could manage. Peter and Vicki were also working together well as a team, due to Vicki’s very impressive “holiday nails” not lending themselves particularly well to posting leaflets!

Keldregate, Sherwood Drive, Owlers Close, Alandale Road all got done, we were absolutely flying trough our supply of leaflets and having a great time whilst doing so. It was nice too to be able to chat to some local residents as we passed and explain what we were doing. I met Kathleen Turner (who assured me she wasn’t the film star Kathleen Turner!), who was particularly impressed and thought GoodGym was an amazing idea!

After more than an hour on our feet it was time to head for home. And finding ourselves near Bradley Woods, it was a perfect opportunity for a little more off-road running, and also to admire the fenceposts GoodGym had dug holes for for our friends at Woodscape way back on a dark night in October. Incidentally we will be doing another job for Woodscape in a couple of weeks time.

A route back through the woods and along the greenway was the perfect end to a successful night of leafleting and something of a GoodGym ultra run. According to various Garmin and Strava records the run to Deighton and back, along with all the leaflet delivering in between had racked up a total distance somewhere in the region of 10.5K! Well done team, a definite “feet” of endurance and yet another cracking effort by all involved!

One more thing before I go, congratulations to the ever energetic and completely committed Kati Law who through a combination of Group Runs, Community Missions and Coach Runs totalled 50 GoodGym good deeds last night. Well done Kati, great effort!