30 GoodGymers and a dog named Bunty ran between 5-6km, made beds for the homeless and helped garden for a sheltered housing association

Welcome along to the newbies this week: Amanda, Amelia, Nancy and AraKang! Thanks for coming along :)

In the news this week:

1. Tom Benson is organising a 5km and 10km time trial this Sunday in Regents Park at 10.30, get along it's gonna be good! More information here.
2. Also as GG Camden we are organising to do Regents Park 10km together on April 2nd, watch out for updates.
3. The first GG Social is next Thursday at the Joker of Penton Street in Angel, sign up here
4. Lastly the amazing Polly Skeats-Beswick got her wings today (100 good deeds), she has been running with us for two years and has a coach she has been seeing since June!

After the news, headcount and an active warm up we split into two groups, one helping C4WS and the other going to the sheltered housing.

PB Sheltered Housing report:

16 of us headed North running 2.6km to Kentish Town, the air was cold but the GoodGymers were spritely!

We arrived and met the wonderful Cathi who explained that the block of flats at Ashdown Crescent has over 40 people over the age of 65 living there, she helps look after them and the garden we worked on is used by them.

Barking!

Our tasks for this evening were as follows:

• Steve led a team of sweepers to clean up the garden, paths and general space.
• A team of six planted flowers and plants in a flower bed.
• Polly, Chris and Jess shifted mulch over the plants and bed.
• Kat led on planting in another section of the garden.
• A team of four, including Mi put together a bird feeder

Everyone did brilliantly and we finished everything in great time to help this fantastic project!

We ran 2.8km back home and stopped off to do four Strides. These are good to do at the end of a run because they stimulate fast-twitch fibres, running faster increases the range of motion and they're a great opportunity to practice good form. Read an article on Strides here.

Frances' report here:

Frances and Pritesh led 14 runners to the American International Church to help set up beds for the homeless shelter again. The good news was that there were fewer beds than last week as some of the shelter users had found some more permanent accommodation! We added a bit of a twist to the task by also helping to shift some chairs to the hallway, but we still finished in super quick time.

Good news!

The task completed, we headed to Russell Square for a fitness session. A relay seems like it should be a relatively simple thing to arrange, but it turns out a three-point continuous relay with only three teams means that some people are going to have to run some extra turns – SURPRISE! Hopefully it kept you all warm!

We followed this up with a slightly longer route home than normal, via Gray's Inn Road, and made it back with plenty of time for a thorough stretch!

Thanks for leading Pritesh & Frances and thanks for coming everyone. Sign up to next week here, we will be helping Abbey Community Centre and continuing to help C4WS at the homeless shelter.

PB out.

Three of us were keen to do a nice long run over to The Bridgelink Centre in Isleworth this evening. Joining regulars Simon and Andy was Matthew from Wandsworth doing a spot of tourism and in the mood for getting a few miles in the legs.

We worked our way through the streets, chatting about running, and counting down the kilometres, occasionally mentioning that none of us knew where we were or had been in this area before.

And finally we made it. We went in the centre to find Kevin, the caretaker, who we'd been told had lots of jobs for us. Except.... he didn't :( Nope, apparently there was a bit of raking to do earlier on, but somebody had already done it.

Any window cleaning? Sweeping? Tidying up? Nope, 'fraid not. Any leaflets we could drop off on the way back? Nope, 'fraid not.

So, we had a tour of the centre, a glass of water and then headed back.

This time our attention turned to food, which is unsurprisingly quite a common topic for runners on longer runs. And what are our favourite post-run foods? Porridge and Peanut Butter for Matthew, Peanut Butter and Jam on Toast for Simon and Jacket Potato with Tuna and Sweetcorn for Andy.

Why not all three?

We are doing a shorter run of 2.5k to Ealing Road Baptist Church next week where there will definitely be a task and there's loads for us to do, and where Roger (former chef) has promised to cook us up some takeaway food. The last batch was delicious.

So, get down, get fit and get fed.

See you there,
Simon