Jam packed with good deeds

Eighteen wonderful Westminster GoodGymmers ran 7km tonight to help One Big Family Victoria, a brilliant charity for homeless people here in Westminster.

We gathered in our usual spot at New Balance Oxford Street with an incredible 6 (SIX) first time runners. Michelle, Aoife, Sam, James, Olivia and Rhys. Incredible. Sam even brought her documents ready for checking.

It was also Gabrielle's 50th good deed!! Amazing. A black t-shirt will be on it's way to you. Make sure you give her a cheer!

After a quick brief for our newbies, we had a short warm up and number circle before setting off.

It's a longer run than usual down to Victoria, so we tried to keep a good pace. A tricky thing to do down New Bond Street, Piccadilly, and Green Park, but our team did brilliantly and we arrived at our destination exactly on time.

One Big Family Victoria are using a basement youth club to do their work, so we all filed in and Mike was there to give us our instructions. The majority of our team, 11, helped in the kitchen. Here they formed a production line to spread margarine (or jam for a vegetarian option), grate cheese, put sandwiches together with ham, then bag them separately for the people the charity will be helping. We also had runners on breakfast duty, bagging pastries. Once all that was done, the runners speedily turned to slicing some delicious looking and enormous cake before bagging those up too.

The rest of the team helped in the main room. This involved filling the large water heaters ready for teas and coffees, and sorting through a variety of donated clothes to separate the most useful items and also divide into genders. Bizarre t-shirt slogans aside (and not all suitable for sharing), the work passed quickly and soon there were large neatly folded piles of clothes ready to be handed out.

25 minutes passed rapidly before we tidied up and filed out. Our task leaders were delighted with everyone's efforts, which save the volunteers loads of time.

From there, I led the group back to base, with Nina kindly back marking. On the way we made a brief stop for some extra running in Green Park. Using the lamp posts as markers, the runners could either do some interval running, or versions of progressive running over a 300 meter (ish!) stretch. Everyone upped their pace brilliantly and we made sure we caught our breath at the top for a moment or two. From there it was a quick run back to base. After a stretch and a round of applause we were done.

Well done everyone and I hope to see you all again soon.