Sand By Me

Wending their way through miniature spooks and ghouls, eight unfazed runners covered around 5km and sanded a whole load of woodwork at Beckenham Baptist Church.

This week we welcomed a couple of tourists. Hello to Gosia, who was running in her twentieth GoodGym area tonight (wow!) and to Helena, who normally runs with GoodGym Islington; welcome south of the river Helena, where it's really at!

Kudos to Louise and Stuart for their pumpkin t-shirt and slightly garish leggings, on theme!

Goal!!!!

Before we set off, I talked a little about goals and just how marvellous they are. You can set yourself a goal on the GoodGym website, which can be very motivating, putting it out there and telling everyone what you aim to achieve (you will also get lots of support from your fellow runners). Louise pointed out that publicly announcing a goal can go either way, so let's all set one and do a little experiment shall we?! I haven't set a goal in a while, so I will practice what I preach and set one shortly.

Our run this evening took us over (down, yay!) towards Beckenham and past a few cute mini-skeletons and vampires who, to be honest, looked more shocked by us running towards them, chatting loudly! We were soon at the church, where an alternative non-Hallowe'en children's party was taking place, with a bouncy castle, which we had sadly missed, as it was slowly deflating when we walked in (now that would have been a fun fitness session!).

Since our last visit, Nigel and the other helpers have been busy giving the room another coat of paint and our job tonight was to sand the woodwork, ready for some glossing. Once everyone had grabbed some sandpaper, there was a cacophony of raspy noise, as the old, dark blue paint was smoothed away. As always, our volunteers worked quickly and we even had time to crack open a tin of paint (weirdly called 'Naughty Step', who comes up with these names?!) to start painting around the edge of the doors and windows. It's looking good! Nigel informed us that this room is to be decorated next week, by a visiting group, as a bomb shelter. This will be used by school groups as part of their learning, we're intrigued to see the transformation! To make the space usable, we had to move the furniture back to the edges, with a quick wiggle and shuffle of filing cabinets and bookshelves.

Treat or treat?

Time to go and time for a quick fitness session. By now, all the tiny treat-seekers had gone home to bed and had been replaced by their older, less charming counterparts. We ducked into the entrance of a nearby park, to play a little game. With a lucky dip in the bag, you could find yourself with a 'trick' (squats, tricep-dips, lunges etc) or a 'treat' (a little shuttle run), which we did for a while until the local pranksters decided our vicinity was the place to throw fireworks. Again, time to go!

As we stretched, we talked about next week's task, another brand new one, to Melvin Hall. Why not sign up now and put it in your diary? We also talked about Stuart's upcoming trip (lucky thing), we look forward to seeing the red t-shirt on tour and hearing all about it in a few weeks. Well done everyone on another great task, aren't Tuesdays great?!