What the BLEEPing BLEEP was that BLEEP test

Tonight we truly Mondayed the Monday out of Monday. It all began, as all good Monday evenings do, at the Battersea Arts Centre to say hello to faces familiar and spanking new ones too. Welcome to the lovely new running legends that are Amy, Emma and Oli.

It had been a bumper week for racers – must’ve been the sun – and we said a huge well done to Sarah and Matthew who both ran, and to Joanna who nailed her very first park run. You guys! Ben not only smashed the Brighton marathon this weekend but also tops our distance leader board with Berit and Sophie chasing not far behind. It’s always good to give as well as receive so well done to Matthew for doing both with cheers.

Thanks Vicki for our CoRUNdrum even from sunny Australia (well done on your park run in Melbourne!). Where in London are there not one but two statues of Mahatma Gandhi? We were stumped. So the best thing to do was to set off for our task at the Bridge Church and community centre. They had 500 – FIVE HUNDRED – leaflets for their upcoming Easter festival that they needed dispersing throughout Battersea, and who did they call? GoodGym Wandsworth of course. We divided ourselves into groups of four, and tackled different areas of the estates around the centre. We were done in record time – some teams even climbing 20 storeys, from which, says Jack, there was a pretty beautiful view. There was even a spot of ‘hide from the trainer’ going on from naughty group Sarah, Dave, Jessie and Sarah – which would have been successful if Sarah was not hiding behind a see through bike shed in neon orange. You scamps!

We caught our breath and then set off for the beautiful Battersea Park for what was set to be one muthableeper of a fitness session. Following some requests, we were going to give the infamous Bleep Test a go. Used by the military and other badass organisations to test the toughest of the tough’s fitness levels, the test uses a series of beeps which grow closer and closer together. The idea is to get to the 20m line before the beep goes. Man, was it tough. Everyone did incredibly well, and, as Luke points out, the Police ask you reach level 6 to pass their test – you are all fit enough to join the boys (and girls) in blue. Ello ello ello! Special shout outs go to Sophie and Rachel as last ladies sprinting, and to Roshan and Dan for getting to an amazing level TWELVE. Seriously impressive, Wandsworth.

It would have been a shame to waste the last rays of the setting sun, so after a vote we chose a bit of core work over hill sprints, and finished the night with an abs blast. We reached peak excitement when a little dog decided we looked like a lot of fun and ran over to say hello. I know these words appear a little too regularly in our run reports but…GoodGym mascot? Sadly we couldn’t quite fit him in our rucksack.

The speedy group set off ahead of the sexy group, and doubled back on themselves half way back, so we all finished up back at the BAC around the same time. For the first week ever nobody cracked the CoRUNdrum – it was Tavistock Square, obvs.

Next week we DO have an Easter run, and we’ll be taking the train part of the way, before having a little Easter social to compare the size of the eggs the Easter Runny has brought us. Sign up here, kids:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/digging-a-trench-at-our-local-primary-school