24 GoodGymers booked a trip to the library at John Betts Primary and made shhhh happen!

That old c word is very much the talk of GoodGym and the World, but it didn't stop 23 GoodGymers from joining me tonight to help out with a range of jobs at Eloise's school, John Betts Primary.

Tonight we welcomed along, Erica, Dan and Katherine to their first H&F group run, hope you enjoyed it! It was also lovely to have David join us and GoodGym tourist, Leticia, from our neighbours GoodGym Hounslow. Thank you all for joining us and lending some extra hands tonight! 🙌

The 'authoritive' red whistle made a return and helped us kick off the night where akin to obedient school children, everyone fell silent and headed outside as instructed. Once settled in our 'glamorous' cordoned off car park spot, we began the intros and news round-up...

Shoutouts 📣

• A big well done to Matt and Eloise for completing the Cambridge Half, with a few bonus miles thrown in at the beginning!
• Thank you to Cookie for backmarking and to Lucy for the additional photos and insta boomerangs!

The book end...a recap of this week's news

1. Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Please read GoodGym's current guidelines here 🦠📝. At the moment, all GoodGym activities are carrying on as normal but will be updated as the situation progresses. REMEMBER...Catch it. Bin it. Kill it! 🗑️

2. Upcoming H&F Community Mission - Last Saturday of the month...help out the Fulham Palace Volunteers, all the details are here.

3. Race volunteers needed 🏁 - Volunteer at adidas City Runs: 1 hour - Sunday 5th April and Hackney Half Aid Station Volunteering - Sunday 17th May.

We began with a pulse raising warm-up which involved some high knees, spotty dogs and inner foot taps, which seemed to more resemble Morris dancing for some...Lucy! With everyone warmed-up and stretched we set off to John Betts Primary School, with Cookie kindly backmarking to ensure no one was lost en route.

Having successfully navigated our way through the busy central streets of Hammersmith, Matt spotted the perfect spot for our weekly wall sit and thus began the most beloved 30 seconds of the session....

Wall sit complete, we sped off towards the front gates of John Betts Primary and tracked down Matt who was inside awaiting our arrival. Katie and Tom were both left in amazement and disappointment when they learnt that the 2 people in the picture they recreated on our last visit to John Betts were in the school last Monday! Both were completely gutted that they'd narrowly missed out on meeting royality!

Another toot of the 'authoritive' red whistle silenced the group and they gathered round in a circle. Matt and his daughter, Emily greeted the team and explained the jobs that they'd be tackling tonight:

*Sticking new labels on the library books 📚 *Moving 2 storage units from one side of the school to the other 🗄 *Helping to sort the school uniform back into the storage units👕

With Eloise being Head of English at the school it was only right she led most of the team to the library to begin the relabelling library book process. On the way into the library, we spotted the wonderful 'Welcome back GoodGym' PowerPoint slide that Matt had made earlier in the day...lovely!

Three weeks ago, the team had helped the PTA with categorising all the library books by genre. But now the fun really began...

Book us up

Each label represented a genre and all the correct coloured labels needed to be stuck on each of the library books, what could go wrong?! Green 📗 = Nature, Blue 📘 = Science and Technology, and 📙 = History, amongst many others!

Booking on gas!

The team spread themselves around the room onto the different tables that had been allocated with a genre and coloured label.

Book in the day!

With everyday being a school day the team learnt some interesting facts and stories, including one about the water cycle! Tom even discovered that many of the books preceded his birth!

Book in business

With a whole heap of books to get labelled, yes there really was A LOT of books in the library, who'd have thought it(?!) the team efficiently got a labelling production line going. GoodGymers labelled the books,then passed them to the PTAs who added the freshly labelled books to the shelves in the library.

While the others tackled the labelling, Cookie, Andrew, Biscuits and Matt headed upstairs to the storage cupboard where they were faced with a tiny room. In the room were two storage units that needed emptying and then moving across to the other side of the school.

Piles of uniforms, boxes and shelving were moved out of the storage room and from inside the cupboard into the adjacent room.

Treat yo' shelf!

With the storage units now empty, Team muscle, who had some extra muscle added with the arrival of Annabel, began to shift and wiggle the units out the room and up the stairs. Matt practiced his escapism and slid between the narrow gap between the doorway and unit.

When push comes to shove

Wth the storage units successful shifted, pushed and shoved (amongst other methods!) across to the other room the first job was to slide the shelves back in to the units.

Biscuits couldn't contain his excitement as he joined Matt, Cookie and Andrew in ferrying across the final few boxes from the storage room.

Some shelf indulgence

With the units shelved and ready, it was time to sort the uniform into ages and place them neatly on the shelf. Bags and organisation, this was definitely a job made for Sarah! Both Sarah and Erica helped one of the PTA members sort through the mountains of bags and uniform until they were all nicely sorted and organised.

With all the jobs completed the team reconvened in the hall with their eye on the climbing frame. Eloise was first to climb to the top, closely followed by Cookie whilst the rest of the team gathered round for a top team photo

Matt had kindly given out some glow in the dark wristbands leftover from a cycling proficiency course which also provided another excellent group team photo op.

We said our thank yous and goodbyes to Matt and Emily and headed outside for a quick fitness blitz. Upon hearing the word “fitness”, Team Nash waved and exited stage right as quick as a flash!

In front of the school, the team smashed out some frog jumps, pistol squats, snowboard jumps, supermans and partner squats before beginning the short run back to base. En route we had a brief pause that enabled Sarah to complete one of her physio exercises, some side squats - two birds, one stone!

Back at base we book ended the evening with a good stretch off and class was dismissed!

Next week, we'll be flyering for Open Age H&F around White City, please sign up here. Absolutely awesome work tonight team!💪 🙌 Have a lovely rest of your week and weekend 😊.

It's that time of the month, when City Harvest needs our help! 11 GoodGym Heroes came to the rescue! There were two main tasks to focus on; one group lead by Paul went outside in their City Harvest high vis to sort and organise the crates and trays whilst the second group lead by Sam stayed inside to sort out the food delivered by Amazon Park Royal earlier in the day.

With hardly any space and with "too many cooks in the kitchen" as the saying goes, Sam, Alexandra, Annabel (known as the bread lady for the day), Chris, Emily and Jenny (x2) sorted through the donated food, check dates, and organised them in categories (fruit, veg, ready meals, red meat, white meat, fish, diary etc.). Any food with today's or tomorrow's date needed to go out to the local charities. There was an initial confusion of how the food needed to be sorted... Yet, once we all got going, there seem to be a system and the sorting and organising was finished within an hour!

Upon waiting for a Costco delivery (which never came), Jenny (x2), Emily and Sam took the very brave task of finding meat and ready meals for a local food bank in the blast freezer, which was at a very cold minus 19 degrees! It was like playing a giant version of tetris - where we shifted crates of frozen sauces, cheeses and other random frozen foods to find and get the wanted goods... With our hands slowly getting cold and numb. Of course, we took it in turns to ensure none of us froze to death! Yet, you won't see us rushing off to Siberia or Alaska in the winter anytime soon!

Our final task for the day (which Annabel and Jenny kindly stayed beyond 14:00 for, thanks again), was to load up one of the vans with all the food with today's or tomorrow's date that needed to go out. However, upon loading 3/4 of the van, the driver came by to let us know the front left tire was flat... We left it at that.

There's always a monthly community mission with City Harvest! If you enjoyed yourself today or enjoyed reading this report and like the sound of this task, join us in April! Check out it out in the "Community Missions" and sign up!