Amy

What a relief to be rained on this evening after the oppressive heat of the last couple of days! And what a joy to be out getting fit and doing good with a great bunch of people.

We met under the shelter of an obliging tree in Boyn Grove Park, welcomed everyone and kicked off with a discussion about whether we should head straight to the task or have a play in the rain in the park first. Playing in the rain won of course, so we warmed up our legs with some slightly silly drills and then went for a lap of the park. Well done to everyone for powering up the big hill!

We then walked together the short hop to All Saints Junior School, where a blue corridor was awaiting its first coat of white paint. We were welcomed by task owner Carl, he showed us which bits to paint and which bits to leave and equipped us with plenty of brushes and rollers. Then we set to work. After about an hour we were proud to have covered almost the entire space - more than we imagined we would manage on arrival. There had also been lots of laughter and happy chatter, some miaowing, some excellent use of tall people and ladders to for the high bits, and we even washed a wall!

We then headed out into the (now even heavier) rain for a quick fitness session involving resistance bands, penguins, burpees, and a three-legged race. Such fun!

Thanks to all who came along and well done on a great session! If you're up for helping with coat 2 on Monday evening, click here for more details and to sign up.

This evening's sunny session had 3 distinct parts:

Part 1 - Greet and Retreat

The first part was our run or walk, where I had everyone going round and back and down and up the hills of Boyn Grove Park in our meet and retreat session. I very much enjoyed seeing GoodGymers head towards each other and pause to greet each other with squats or side bends before turning heel and running away again. It looked like the start of a flash mob and I would love to know what other park users made of it. It was also a great workout!

Part 2 - Back to the Cutting Hedge

We then got stuck into our task for the evening - a return to the corner of Courthouse Road and Bath Road to do battle with an over-enthusiastic hedge. Last Summer this hedge completely overwhelmed the pavement, making the route unsafe for pedestrians, particularly families on the school run. Back in the Autumn, GoodGym helped task owner Lydia and other local residents to recover the pavement, and today's aim was to maintain that good work. Armed with secateurs, we quickly made our attack and in about 45 minutes the job was done.

Lydia described us as like a trail of destruction. We'll take it as a compliment!

Part 3 - 🎉 Celebrating Kanika's 100th Good Deed

Then onto the part we had all been waiting for: celebrating Kanika's 100th GoodGym good deed. Whoop whoop! As is now customary for the 100 milestone, we celebrated with cake (thank you Diya!), a home made medal and a poem:

100 good deeds by Kanika!

This GoodGymer is one awesome chica.

Skilled with a paintbrush, a spade or rake,

And she doesn’t fuss when she can’t have the cake.

She’s always smiling, thoughtful and calm

An animal lover, who would do no harm.

Her capacity for good knows no limits,

She even bought us all baby Guinness.

She cycles here and there on her Carrera

Even the Brighton 50km didn’t scare her!

She walks a lot too and even parkruns

She inspires others to get off their bums.

As a Taskforce member she goes beyond and above

She helps me share the GoodGym love.

She has lead on over 30 a session

And she fits this all in around her other obsession...

You think I mean Diya, but that’s not it!

I’m talking about a team with a red and white kit

Thank you Arsenal for bringing Kanika to the UK!

And now there’s only one thing left to say…

We love you Kanika, we do

We love you Kanika, we do

We love you Kanika, we do

Oh Kanika, we love you!

We laughed, we cried, we barely slept, we ate copious amounts of snacks, we ran, and ran, and ran some more.

135 miles completed by each of the teams.

It was epic, and we will be back again next year. Well done to everyone who took part, you are all superstars!

Well done to everyone who came along on this evening's group run, and a very warm (26°C according to BBC weather!) welcome to Lena, Marli and Kim, who joined us for their first GoodGym good deeds. And what a lovely evening to be out!

We started with a sociable run and walk around the Boyn Hill area, with options to run up and down four steep hills along the way. Kudos to Juli and Gemma for bagging all four. Then we headed to Boyne Hill School to meet task owner Ian and tackle various tasks in the playground.

Priority number 1 was a sandpit with a rotten bottom. A fence panel (we think) had been used as the floor but years of play had taken its toll and the wood had softened and splintered, making the sand unsafe. Kim, Gemma, Amy and Juli took on the job of digging out the rotten bottom and sieving the sand to remove the splinters. It might sound a-fence-sieve but it was incredibly satisfying and they made great progress. You might even say they were sieving the dream!

Meanwhile Lena and Marli did a fantastic job of clearing a big tub-full of weeds from the reception and pre-school playgrounds, before joining the sand team to help with the sieving. A sand-ing ovation for you two!

On the far side of the playground, Sophie, Gillian, Nicola and Kanika were equally busy with their job of sticking the leaves back on the trees. You might say it took a lot of bottle for the school to ask us to do this, and you would be right! In fact it probably took around 500 bottles, as these leaves were made of milk bottle caps, to top off the trees painted on the school wall. Well done to the tree team for finishing two out of the three trees. We hope to return to complete tree number three soon.

We finished at the school with a team photo and Ian said 'I would tell you all to smile, but you haven't stopped smiling all evening.' So true! A big thank you to Ian for welcoming us and giving us such enjoyable tasks.

We ended the session with a short walk back to our start location, a round of stretches and much excitement about the upcoming Endure24 festival, which lots of GoodGymers are preparing for this weekend. Good luck team!

Hope to see you all again next week. It's going to be Bray-lliant...! Click here for more details and to sign up.