10 Westminster GoodGymers ran nearly 7k to Little Venice to help keep our waterways as clear and plastic free as possible by collecting 14buckets of rubbish from the Canal path.

On our longest run we do was great to see a load of GoodGym first timers come and dominate a really important task for our environment.

Running from Oxford Street all the way up to little Venice in the summer warmer and humidity is no easy effort. But we powered through and made good time!

Getting to our store at the HQ of the Canal & River Trust we kitted up and headed out to grab as many waterway pollutants as we could!

2 litre plastic bottles a load of drinks cans and a million cigarette butts (which contain 3 different types of plastic) were all picked up and bucketed!

With the rubbish piling high we emptied it into the recycling bins and smoothly and strongly powered our way back to base!

Thanks for your efforts and hard work on making such a big contribution to our adopted area of Canal path in Little Venice!!

Hope to see you all next week for a special, fun, and sweaty visit to St Andrews Youth Club for our Kin Ball match up!!

Joel

21 amazing Westminster GoodGymers ran a brilliant 7k and sorted out all of One Big Family home less charity’s Winter clothing donations!

** News**

Chi let us know about the assault course training sessions that will be taking place twice a month leading up to the ** Spartan Race** in May!! Get yourself signed up for the training sessions. And the volunteering and racing info for the Spartan Race.

Thanks to Olivia for the shout out for this Sunday’s GoodGym Long Run training session starting in Kew. All the information is here.

After a flurry of DBS checks to enable runners to access the delights of Missions and Coach runs we got down to the business of Starting GG Westminster 2019 with some energetic and happy running and sorting!

With Danny controlling the back of the group we headed through the busy streets of Central London avoiding as many pockets on pedestrian congestion as possible!! We managed to get a good glimpse of loads of London’s Landmarks as we elegantly glided South towards the River. Managing to keep together for most of the session which was a minor miracle but not as unbelievable as the unprecedented run of Green man (person?) lights we were lucky enough to catch!! Allowing us to speedily get down to the Ebury Estate to meet One Big Family Homeless Charity.

One Big Family Victoria are as small a charity as it gets providing food, clothing and other assistance to Westminster’s homeless community twice a week every week of the year.

After a bumper load of clothing donations piled high in the charities lock ups we had the task of sorting through all the clothing to find the Winter wear then bag it into The type of clothing and splitting by gender and size as well as getting a kids bag ready to go.

15 bags of warm clothes all bagged up and ready to be given out to the homeless community later in the evening.

With the task complete we blitzed the run back laying down some seriously speedy segments of running through Victoria, up to Buckingham Palace then a final big burst up the legendary Green Park drag!

A little trot bag to the New Balance Store finished off a great evening!!

Thanks for a top session and hope to see you all next week for our trip to the River!

Smooth Running

Joel

15 swift Westminster GoodGymers zipped 8km around Central London to wrap 700 Pastries ready for tonight’s One Big Family homeless food run.

Got to love a crisp January evening to get a perfectly paced GoodGym run on! After a volley of DBS checks to enable runners to enjoy the full range of GoodGym activities and welcoming our GoodGym first timers we took a relatively scenic route down to Pimlico to meet the crew at One Big Family Homeless Charity.

With the youth club in use for a meeting we had an outside food production line set up. Diving straight in bagging, wrapping and tying pastry after pastry at a prolific rate! Savoury and sweet were on offer today and box after box was filled onto the wagon ready for transportation!

With 30 minutes of wrapping and bagging complete the wagon was fully loaded. Only thing left was a table deconstruction race to take place! Even after giving a massive head start a massive comeback victory was secured!

Emily’s Rockets lead the charge back to base zipping North on the 3k direct route home. While the rest of the squad ran the pastry wagon, and everything else needed for the evenings food kitchen over to Victoria bridge and set up the stall.

With the chase on the wagon runners powered through Green Park hunting down The Rockets but Emily was obviously keeping the pace strong all the way in and comfortably won the Race back to Base!!

All stretched out and heading home with a really fun session complete well done to everyone!!

Next week we will give the fruit 🍈 🍌 🍐 Run a go so please bring a fruit donation along if you want to.

Spoke to New Balance about the lockers and it seems they are not using keys so maybe best not to leave valuables in unlocked lockers. Suggest using locked ones for valuables and unlocked for bags and clothes if you want.

Have a great week

Smooth Running

Joel

12 GoodGymers Ran 6k Help Open Age take down their Christmas Decorations (that we put up) following their craft fair.

Great to be back and awesome to see some new GoodGym faces as well as some enthusiastic regular runners!! Happy to set a personal Document Check PB on our first session to!!

With a Spring in our step after so many document checks and locker shuffling we headed out onto the not so busy London Streets!! Maybe it was Storm Eleanor giving us some assistance but we powered South down towards Pimlico setting a very hot New Years Pace!

Reaching the community centre in 18 quick stepping minutes to meet Claire who had boxes at the ready for us to dive straight in! Loading up the boxes with all the Christmas decorations and dismantling the tree like ninjas in 15 swift minutes the decorations were packed away and put up high ready for us to revisit in December!

Open Age are a charity who provide support and activities for the over 55’s and the decorations we put up and took down enabled the sewing club to raise over £200 at the Christmas fair which will keep the group funded for all of 2018!

With some time on our hands we got down to some Strength and Conditioning!! After some mobility drills and balance developing 1 legged, closed eyes standing we got into the tough bit of the session! 6 minutes to join the 100 Club!! rotating through Press ups, Squats and Burpees in minute long intervals we worked hard and strong to squeeze out as many reps as we could!! Great to see nearly everyone double their halfway score!!

With some heavy legs to took it easy back to the New Balance store with an excellent start to 2018 under our belts!

Hope to see you all next week when we visit One Big Family to make some food for the Homeless people in Victoria!!

Have a great week, and rack up those GoodDeeds and Kilometres for the January Challenge.

Smooth Running

Joel