A great return to times gone by with 20 goodgymers joining for tonight's Tuesday session.

Welcome back to Siki for your second group activity, great to see you back with us again.

First timers, Hayley, Jamie and Hannah welcome to your first group run with goodgym Cardiff and the Vale.

A shorter run tonight meant only one thing, time to insert an exercise routine... YES I hear you cry. We bid farewell to the walk / joggers and made our way to the park to start a quick routine, the music began and so did the pain, but it felt good. All of a sudden the time had flown by and we realised we had to make our way to the task, so off we went.

By 19:00 we had all arrived at Samye ready to get going with a list of tasks, we had a white board made up instructing us for the evening.

• Painting one of the rooms.
• Emptying out some items from the attic.
• Weeding the front entrances to the buildings.
• Weeding around the back in the community garden space.
• Moving the Buddha water feature from the back to the front seating area.
• And finally, removing the crocosmia (montbretia) from the front planters.

It was a good job we had 20 of us tonight, so we split into our groups and got to work.

Straight to work were team 'crocosmia', ripping out the plants and bunching them for anyone that wanted to take some home. Whilst a beautiful plant when they flower, they can soon take over a plot by spreading, I will be putting them into planters ready for next year.

Next to get in were the painters, grabbing rollers, trays and paint they made their way into the building to start the transformation. The colours were bright and very Tibetan Buddhist, the room will look wonderful once finished.

Weeding teams got to work at the front and back of the building, getting the paving looking tidy once more and making the whole centre much more welcoming.

Lorraine took up the team to open up the attic and talk them through what needed to be removed, whilst I went over to the final few to start moving the brilliant Buddha water feature. It was by no means a small thing, with the pedestal being made of concrete slabs and blocks, once the attic team had finished they joined up to help move the Buddha and rebuild within our time.

Tools down, get some grub.

Lorraine was a wonderful host tonight and made up some snacks, so it was time to clear up and take some time to chat, laugh and eat. However, it took far too long to get the painting team to put down their rollers and enjoy some food. We will return soon to finish off the painting and get through some additional tasks, don't you worry about that TEAM.

A quick photo and suddenly it was dark and time to get back to our start location. It's time to get your lamps ready........

Wrong LAMP!

Head or body they all work well, but they will most certainly be needed over the next few months so have a look online as we all need to stay safe with our exercise.

It's a busy time for the goodgymers in Cardiff and the Vale at the moment, after a full weekend of activity we continued with an evening of delivering flyers for the railway gardens project to the local area of Splott.

4 of us ran the streets delivering 500 flyers through the doors of locals to let them know how the project is getting on. In just over an hour we had made our way around and run out of leaflets, so time to get back together for a quick group photo before heading home for dinner.

Tonight a good 15 gymers got together to help out at a NEW project

Our newest start location was Chapter Arts Centre, making our total run a 7km distance today. Welcome back Adam, it's been so long but feels like you never left.

Michael made the promise of not throwing in extra workouts due to the distance, so we began our warm up over in a car park with the usual high knees, butt kicks etc.

The walk / jog group set off first then the speedy runners 5 minutes later, it was a nice simple straight route for the group session. We arrived just in the nick of time to see the organiser setting up everything that we would need, the tasks were to paint the front of the building to spruce it up, paint some tyres out in the back area to be used as planters once dry, to tidy up the grounds around the side of the building from weeding, hoeing to pruning back the larger vegetation and finally helping to pack up chairs and trestle tables ready for a local charity to borrow in the morning.

We split into teams and got to work, the painters getting busy throwing around the paint to help brighten the Church a bit and the tyres a lot.

Martin and Adam headed inside and began moving trestle tables and then folding chairs and putting them onto the trolley, it didn't take long to complete the work inside so they could then get out and join everyone in the sunshine.

The rest of the crew got busy in the grounds surrounding the building, it didn't take long before the green bin was full and it was all looking much more tidy and clean. We gathered the troop for our group photo, everyone was very chatty tonight but we finally managed a photo.

We made our way back to the start location for some food and a nice social. Next week we will be plogging so get signed up.

Tonight, a WHOPPING 16 goodgymers met up, did good and got fit.

We went through some dynamic warm up moves in the park before heading off, it was a total 5km tonight. We had some sidestep / shuffles followed by toy soldiers before finishing with the classic butt kicks, all warmed up and raring to go we split into our two groups.

The walk-jog group were led by Emma who went one way whilst the runners led by Michael sped off eager to get to the task, chatting along the way about what races we were most looking forward too (running or volunteering) now that we had them back over the next three months.

After some traffic light squats, our running and walking was over as we arrived at tonights task at StarGarAllot community gardens. We were met by Camilla who leads at the plot, we have been lucky enough to have had plenty of volunteer opportunities here before with community missions throughout the pandemic. It has been great to see the changes and keep the plots going when the usual volunteers have been unable to get there as much.

Tonight, was a chance for our regular group members to see the space, there were a few that had not seen it yet and they were impressed. Task 1, digging up and emptying some current plots and then edge them with some wood ready for the Winter plants in the greenhouse to get planted. Task 2, unwind the bindweed from the cherry trees so that they can breath again and actually be seen.

40 minutes soon went by, and we had just enough time to rehydrate, eat some biscuits and cake to refuel the run back. We said farewell to Camilla and made our way back for a cool down and chat about the rest of the tasks on this week.

Gold (gold), always believe in your soul, you've got the power to know, you're indestructible, always believe in, 'cause you are, Gold (gold).

Today was a special occasion, our group run this week had moved from the regular Tuesday to Sunday so that we could take part in the I am team GB Hero Event.

It was a very short run / walk up to the Maindy velodrome this morning, but we would make up for that by doing a lap whilst there. Our mission today was a good one, it was part of the talent test and was made up of the following;

1. A timed 20m sprint
2. A stationary broad jump
3. A skill set (participant led)
   

As people arrived, we ticked them off our list, welcomed them as all goodgymers always do before leading them on a warm up around the track. Then it was over to the tests to be timed and recorded, with some very excited parents snapping photos. Some may have been a bit apprehensive at first but after the warm up seemed raring to go.

After 45 minutes it looked as though we were done, so we decided to take a lap around the velodrome – it would be rude not too. #Eat our gold dust

Ready, set, go

Now it was time to collect the cones, mats and balls back up and clear the path ready for the cycling event to start around 13:30……..oh wait whose that popping up?

Prynhawn da Ed Clancy

So, we are not quite finished just yet, as we seem to be part of a photoshoot! I think that may be the closest I will ever be to a gold medal from the Olympics.

Ed was great (we’re friends now so I can call him Ed), we chatted a little about goodgym, how great the display box for the medal from Rio was, whether he’d knitted a pouch for the medal - standard stuff really.

This was a great way to end the week, with the wonderful volunteers from our goodgym family – worth their weight in gold.