Well done to everyone who completed the Blue Plaque challenge this week. A great way to get out and explore your local area on lockdown.

Sign-up to next week's Lockdown Challenge here

It was great to catch up with some of the folks from GGWF on Wednesday. We shared some stories about fitness and stuff we have been doing on lockdown. I'll be online again this Wednesday for a chat and I'd love it if you could join me. Weekly Catch-Up

*This week's training challenge was *

1. Mini HIIT:

• 1-minute of plank

• x5 burpees

• x10 pushups

• x15 crunches

Repeat Session

1. Run or walk x3

Go for at least three runs or walks of at least 30 minutes this week. If you are walking make it brisk so. You need to elevate your heart rate so you should be swinging your arms a bit and having to take more deliberate breaths

1. Take a photo of a scene with no human activity going on

Now you might not actually have signed up to the challenge but if you posted one of the great photos on the WhatsApp group, I have assumed you did all the other things and I have logged you as a completer.

Well done, I loved seeing the photos. I hope you can join me this Wednesday for a Zoom catch up at 8pm. No quiz this week just drinks, chats and a special mystery game that I have organised.

See you there, invitation below Ant Withstandley is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system. Weekly:

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 736 5815 7940

First things first and a huge thank you to our quiz master extraordinaire, Ercole Lugari. What a brilliant set of questions stitched together on a slick online format that rewarded the fastest finger first as well as the correct answers.

Categories included Waltham Forest Flag Names Movies Athletics History Animals Politics UK General Music Food The questions came thick and fast with Kirsty (representing the NHS) and Joanna (representing secondary schools) emerging as the front runners and slugging it out for the top spot. It was a close run thing but eventually, Joanna won. Considering both of their employers have recently been noticed as just about the most important things in this country by a country mile, it seems only right that they did so well.

Looks like we will be doing the same again next week so I hope you can join us. Details to follow in my next weekly fitness email.

Spring hitting it's stride and many of us are spending most of the day looking longingly out of the window and dreaming of picnics on the park and the sound of birds singing in the trees. However, we do get one excercise ration a day and eight cool cats from from Waltham Forest made the most of it by completing the Waltham Forest Lockdown Challenge.

This included:

• a 5k or 30 minute run

• 15 minutes of yoga

• Completing GoodGym's C-19 safety training

The run included an optional selfie in front of one of the beautiful blossom trees

Well done folks, lookout for next weeks challenge in the next few days

We had a change of plan tonight after postponing Project Planter for another day. Fortunately, we found the perfect substitute for our collective tonight as we tidied up a lovely street garden for the folks of Wood Street South Gardening Club.

Met by our industrious contact, Stavros, we armed ourselves with the necessary gloves, rakes, spades etc. that we needed to complete the task in hand.

Accompanied by the enthusiastic barking of a large dog (thankfully it was hidden away behind a tall wall!) we got cracking. It was an honour to be graced by the presence of Jo Loxton tonight, one of our founder volunteers. Jo works so hard we don't see her as much as we would like. It was, of course, great to see everyone else too tonight and what a hard-working and organised bunch they were. Before you could say mulch, they had filled two large bins with about 100kgs of soggy leaves.

After that is was a quick jog to return our tools before doing some intervals around St Mary's Churchyard. Splendid.

I hope you can join us next week for the last Group Run of the decade. After a decent 4km run to the task we will be helping to clean a church in readiness for the Christmas festivities. I hope to see you there and you can sign-up here