Working tyre-lessly

Stand back everyone, make room for a GoodGym Icon!

We felt so honoured to be joined by Alex at the Group Run tonight. Alex is not only a passionate GoodGymer with 237 (!!!) good deeds to his name, but a key member of the central GoodGym team in London. Alex was paying the Frozen North a visit for a few meetings and unfortunately the timing of his return to London meant he couldn't stay for the run tonight, so we really appreciate that he came along to meet everyone.

Alex wasn't the only visitor as we also welcomed Antje who is a journalism student from Belgium. Antje is writing a report about the great work of GoodGym and how it might work overseas, so it was ace to have her along and chat to everyone about running with GoodGym in Newcastle. Hopefully she got a great flavour of what goes on at #GGNCL !

We finally got to celebrate Aimee's 100th good deed and admired her in the golden wings. Check out Aimee's amazing cakes she brought along after making a cake graph of her GoodGym good deeds. The cakes represent 36 group runs, 36 coach runs, 27 community missions and 1 mission to help an older person.

HERO!

We gave Evan a cheer on his mind-blowing achievement at the Cheviot Goat Ultra (check out his profile for the superb 50 mile badge!) and had a quick catch up on the two Christmassy Community Missions that happened last week. Hannah and Graeme joined us for the first time tonight too, kudos to them for coming out and getting stuck in on a cold night and a longer run.

One of our favourite routes tonight led us along the beautiful quayside and up to Byker where we were met by brilliant task owner Sara. It was our second visit to Recyke Y Bike, the brilliant charity that collects donated or abandoned bikes, cleans them up with the help of volunteer engineers including some in prisons, before sending them on to people in need. Their base in Byker (how perfect is that?!) is an enormous treasure trove of every type of bike you could imagine.

Not only did Sara have a list ready for us tonight, but she had typed it too! Stacks of super jobs awaited us including:

• Sweeping the huge workshop

• Kitchen clean up including massive dish wash

• Clear out of the (not scary) staircase

• Wall papering with magazine pictures

• Marking out tools with Sharpie

• Mopping suspect areas of the floor that have been painted by visiting pigeons

• Organising tyres into sizes and occasional hula hooping.

You are just the best at getting done all the jobs we keep putting off!

35 intense and brilliant minutes, then we were off again with two options for the run back: steady pace with me or speedy intervals with Paul. It was almost an even split and Paul's group very kindly gave us a generous head start meaning we arrived back at almost exactly the same time. Nice one!

Hopefully you will be able to join us for our final group run of the year next week for Changing Lives after which we will be staying for drinks at Hotel Indigo and presenting the coveted GoodGymer of the year award! If you'd like to nominate someone for the award, just drop me an email anji@goodgym.org or send me a Facebook message with your vote.

See you then!

Anji x