A huge GG Geordie welcome to our THREE new runners tonight: Abi, Sophie and Lucy. We hope you enjoyed tonight as much as the regulars did! We also welcomed Richard along who is something of a GoodGym tourist and despite being living in the North East, paid his first visit to GoodGym Newcastle tonight. Bravo!

In a twist on usual routine, I did the welcome and briefing indoors tonight partly because we had a smaller group than usual (hello, Blaydon Race online entries!) and also because it was FREEZING and I am a wimp. I caught everyone up on some great Community Missions that happened over the weekend and we marvelled at Evan managing to finish first at Prudhoe Riverside parkrun and make it across to the community mission all in the same morning. Miranda told us all about helping out at the mission on Saturday and I filled Nick in on a creepy dream I had in which he arranged for everyone to sleep over at a Group Run task where there were bunk beds. Please note, fortunately this did not happen in real life.

A very brief warm up and a new conversation topic set (who would you like to see live in concert- dead or alive and from any era?) then off we went.

Now it's been a while since we last ran up the Westgate Road hill and we managed to stay together tonight for the first time ever- was it just me or did it not seem as long tonight? I was so pleased we celebrated with a little mexican wave at the traffic lights- also inwardly celebrating that we only had to run back down it on the way back.

We were met at Elliott House by the fabulous Mark and Alice,who is our main contact for Changing Lives tasks. Elliott House is home to vulnerable men in our city and it was actually the first EVER GoodGym Newcastle Group Run last year so it hold special memories for us! We were starting work on the huge gardens behind Elliott House tonight which is about to have a major makeover over the course of the next few months thanks to us and a volunteer group being tasked directly with the job! It was a super physical task that allowed both solo and team work skills as we got stuck into:

• Clearing out the shed including hoovering and cleaning a massive chalk board

• Pulling up weeds

• Tidying up

• Litter picking looking important with headtorches on

• Posing for photos with strange props (as always) - please see random toilet photo for evidence

We blitzed through the jobs in half an hour tonight before posing for one of my favourite ever group photos. What's brilliant about this task is that it will become a monthly run in which we will be able to regularly see the difference. During the lighter evenings, the plan will be for some of the residents to join us too as they grow in confidence in working together to make their gardens somewhere nice for them to hang out. I will let you know when we have some dates in the diary.

There was a short interval session on the way back tonight in which we saw Abi's amazing sprint technique and found out the weird place I hang my whistle up at home, and everyone worked super hard ahead of their return to The Forth for this week's social. Brilliant energy and a smashing end to a fab night!

I am still awaiting confirmation of the Group Run for next week so keep checking the listings as well as social media and get signed up when you can. There are two great Community Missions again this weekend so pop along if you can. There's a return to Ouseburn Farm on Saturday and lending a hand at Junior parkrun on Sunday

Have a great week doing good things,

Anji x

PS two admin things to ask of you please! If you run regularly with us, you can request to join our private Facebook Group "GoodGym Newcastle Runners" and also can I ask that you please change your profile photo on your GG profile to a photo of yourself to it's easy to contact you if I need to. Thanks!

I missed last week through illness, and therefore I also missed the reason why Evan and Andrew ran tonight's group run holding hands. I actually like not knowing, and I also like that it gave me an immediate pun for the report.

At 2:56pm today we got the email nobody wants on a Monday, telling me that the planned task for Changing Lives had been cancelled so I thanked my lucky stars that Peter was back from his travels in India and therefore able to meet us with his stash of litter pickers. This is why he is GoodGym's reigning champion of resourcefulness of 2018! We were off plogging instead! We warmed up with a word game that involved running around and shouting names of fruit and vegetables at each other which I hope you all agree is an excellent way to start your Monday night. I loved watching this one and it shall be repeated in the future. It was a high-energy welcome to new runners Dave and Harry who happily got stuck in.

KUDOS!

It was my turn to adorn the Geordie cloak of good deeds having logged my 50th good deed two weeks ago, and I swooshed and swished it all the way to our plogging destination: Exhibition Park and Claremont Road car park. As with everything #GGNCL there was a theme for the task and it was to collectively create an alphabet of litter as we went. Tanya and Deb were absolute queens of this, even logging a Z (zip ties) and Q (Quality Street wrapper). It's always astounding how much litter comes out of that car park and soon 6 massive bags of rubbish had been collected and deposited into the bin. Plogging is great for the soul and it's always good to see the immediate difference it can make too.

Onwards we went (I swished) into the park for a triple whammy fitness session complete with hills, steps, star jumps and finished off with strides, giving me the chance to share my favourite running form tips for a great sprint finish. Watch out parkrun- we are coming for you! Many of the gang were off to the pub to get a knitting lesson from Louise (with red wool- on brand!) showing that we are more than just a running club that does good deeds.

I just wish I knew what they were holding hands for.

There are not one but two chances to do good deeds this weekend! Join in with the monthly mission at Nunsmoor Park on Saturday or at Junior parkrun in Newcastle on Sunday Both will be led by our awesome task force as I am off to take part in the fabulous Marathon Talk Run Camp this weekend.

Can't make a weekend mission? Don't worry, we are back doing amazing things at Newcastle Uni for our Group Run on Monday where we are being joined by a huge team from Zero Light Newcastle . Get involved- it's going to be huge and there's a walking option too, so perfect time to bring along someone new to GoodGym.

Happy running, and holding hands.

Anji x