We're a socialable bunch in Ealing and every first Tuesday of the month we run and then we party. This week it was all about pizza!

Great to see everyone, have a catch up, a bev and chow down on London's best pizza!

Put the next date in your diary now - Tuesday 7th April!

On Saturday morning, after parkrun, we made our second visit to the Hounslow Jamia Mosque to help Ruby work on the Peace Garden.

Ruby, our task owner, grew up at the mosque, which she says her grandfather helped build. As a young girl, she was brought up in it, worshipping and volunteering here.

Since her husband died two years ago, she volunteers her time working on the gardens. It started as a wish to plant an apple tree in memory of her late husband, and blossomed into something much bigger.

It became clear to Ruby that she would need help, since she has some physical limitations and limited volunteers, so she contacted the council. A woman named Michelle at Hounslow Council said she might know of some resources and sent through some links. One of those was to GoodGym. “I immediately got everything filled in,” Ruby said. “I’d never heard of GoodGym before, but I immediately got you in.”

A first visit to the mosque was set up as a Community Mission for a Monday night, and we got stuck in. Ruby explained that the garden hadn’t had significant work done in 20 years and that she had a vision for it, but couldn’t physically manage much of the work herself. After an hour or so we realised we would need to come back, so we organised a future mission on a weekend when there would be more light and more people would be available.

“I think you all are absolutely marvellous, and the mosque is so thankful"

Ruby offered us tea and biscuits, and the Imam promised us lunch on our return. We assured her it wasn’t necessary, but she couldn’t be dissuaded. “I think you all are absolutely marvellous, and the mosque is so thankful,” she said over a huge meal of vegetable curry and rice, scotch eggs, lamb curry, chicken curry, juices, and pudding which we were encouraged to take with us when we finally had to go after a long lunch talking with Ruby and her colleague Mohammed about the potential for other ways GoodGym could get involved with volunteering through the mosque.

We explained that for many of us, it was our first visit to a mosque and were offered a tour on our return. “It’s nice that we can learn from each other and share the experience together. The garden has been brought back by you guys more than anyone else. We would love to have your input on the garden,” Ruby said.

Unlucky for some but not for us, we had 13 lovely runners join us to spread the word about GoodGym missions to local organisations that work with older people.

🔈 Roll call:

• Great to have Andy and Michelle over from Hounslow and Leticia from Richmond.

• Welcome to Tracey who joined us for her first GoodGym session and also to Marieke who has been to a couple of community missions and joined us for her first group run!

• And lastly huge warm welcome to Amy from GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead which is launching on Wednesday 26th of February. It’s just a short train ride from Ealing so do come along - sign up and details here.

📣 News, read all about it:

• We nailed that January Challenge! In Ealing we did 139 good deeds and ran over 2000kms as a team. That’s about 10% more good deeds than last January and over 500kms more too!

• We need to vote for our most impactful task from the month, of you’ve got a nomination, let me know.

Our mission last night should we choose to accept it...

Missions are great, if you’ve not done one before or are wondering how to involved here’s all the information you need and the time is now! Missions are one off practical tasks to help older people on their homes with jobs they would otherwise struggle to do alone. Think changing lightbulbs, moving furniture or a bit of gardening. To get involved you need a DBS check, I can do this on the group run and it’s so quick and easy. If you want to get verified, click here to see the next steps.

Anyway long story short, we want more missions in Ealing, the trouble is not a lot of people know about them and we only take referrals from professional organisations. That’s where we come in! Armed with maps, tonight to spread out around Ealing with little info packs all about missions and how you can get our help. We visited 6 doctors surgeries, 2 care homes and a local organisation that deals with older people.

Chris led the running group out towards Northfields while I lead a run walk group towards West Ealing and we finished back at base in a beautiful synchronised fashion.

With a moving task tonight we had plenty of time for some fitness fun to finish and tonight it was whatever the group made it as all the exercises were determined by you. Some mean ones in there (mountain climbers and press ups in the mud) mixed with some lovely zen balancing exercises.

Some stretches to finish and we were off to the pub for our social which is always the first Tuesday of the month.