A new task to start a new week!

It was a night for some OGs to catch up with some familiar faces back for tonight's group run for Junction Point.

We were running and walking to spread the word and wonderful work of Junction Point to raise awarness of Passion to Paycheque, turning brilliant ideas from brilliant people into paid projects. We met at Benwell Asda and split into two groups of runners and walkers. It was also FINALLY Debbie's chance to wear the cloak of good deeds after hitting her fabulous fiftieth good deed a few weeks ago! Kudos Deb, you rock.

We managed to cover seven streets and a whopping 200 leaflets and the time flew by. We will be hitting a different location in October when we take on part two of this task.

Rounding off a brilliant night it was a car park workout of squats, drills, tricep dips and much more and we left feeling good and ready to face another great week.

Hello September and hello again to Newcastle Eagles community gardens!

It's always a great task with super Task Owner Neil who doubles up as task owner and runner regularly for us! Tonight we were weeding in the huge car park which had already been started by a group of Cadets a few days earlier.

We trialled a new starting point tonight: Central Station.

Pros: easy to find, easy to get to, opposite a Starbucks

Cons: very busy, millions of passing runners, wanted to get a Starbucks before we'd even started.

I took a solo walk to the task tonight on what turned out to be the first autumnal day in what feels like a very long time, and met up with the others who were already about to get stuck in. We had to remove and clear (very prickly) weeds to keep the car park safe and clear. It was another task where the time flew by and contained several thousand very purposeful squats!

Neil, Amy and Paul got stuck into pulling, weeding and clearing while I nominated myself for carrying and dumping the weeds- very satisfying!

Paul had perhaps the toughest job of the night, removing a very deep-rooted and stubborn tree that eventually took both him, Neil and a fork to get it out. I think you can see from the before and after pictures that we made a tree-mendous difference tonight.

Kudos!

It was a perfect evening in Newcastle for Paul's 100th good deed! Go and give him a massive cheer. Paul's a brilliant route master, run leader and wing man who has been with GoodGym Newcastle since Day One, so it's great to see him get his wings.

We had a quick catch up on the weekend's VERY wet mission which contained path clearing and a lot of rain!

"My shoes still smell like a swamp!" ~ Aimee

I walked across to Leazes Park while everyone else ran and we met ready to pick litter around the lake and play areas. We set ourselves the challenge of collecting an alphabet of litter and discussed everything from fainting, to phobias, to forgotten racing strategy as we picked! We managed to get four bags filled in just 25 minutes.

The weirdest item we found in our almost-alphabet was a single handcuff (not police issue). We managed to get most of the A-Z with a bit of creative spelling, then it was on to an interval workout of running and upper body work as a fast-burst fitness session.

We are back to Group Running next Wednesday as we visit the community gardens at Newcastle Eagles Arena. Hope to see you there!

We love helping out at Ouseburn Trust, because we always manage to discover an area we didn't know existed in a town we thought we knew well!

After a quick warm up of drills we all opted for the short route to Ouseburn on what was a lovely evening. We were met by Dave who distributed gloves and tools including one that made Seb feel like the Grim Reaper, despite disappointingly not wearing a black cloak for the occasion.

It was a short amble over to the area that was getting our attention just off Lime Street, a green patch that was overgrown and long in need of TLC. We joined a group of regular volunteers to chop everything back and clear the area of litter. Aimee and Charlotte definitely channeled their days into some strong lopping and chopping tonight! After 30 minutes you could really see the difference we made.

After the short jog back, we finished off with some mobility drills and strength exercises.

We are back doing good things at our Community Mission on Saturday, and Group Run to Leazes Park on Monday.