9 Westminster GoodGyming Goodgymers ran 5.5k to St Andrews youth club and stuffed 750 letters to help the youth club get some much needed funding!!

Setting of from the warmth of Marshall Street Leisure Centre into the Central London Chill. Navigating the hassle of Piccadilly as we headed around St James’ park as we hit our stride. Great pace and form as the distance was covered.

Reaching St Andrew’s Youth club, one of Westminster’s most important youth institutions and a safe haven for so many young people.

Tonight’s task was to fill as many letters and address them for a local business who in term then provided funding for the clubs news letter as well as new computers for the club.

An awesome production line and some motivational encouragement from the club’s members meant we were flying!! Filling so many letters it was crazy totalling up 750 completed letters in 40 minutes!! To warm us up for the run back we were given some lovely stuffed peppers from the youth clubs cooking class!!

Swift run back and our job was complete!!

Great work and see you next week for some more fun on the run!!

Joel

What a way to end GG Brent’s January! An incredible 19 people ignored the afternoon downpours and joined me to run 5km and help Mora Primary School!

Lucy, Molly and Giuliano joined for their first ever GoodGym run, Sarah touristed all the way from Bexley and we capped off the evening with a triple celebration of our own 5th birthday (yes we do celebrate all month), Claire’s actual birthday and Amy’s 50 good deed milestone!

Celebrations

As mentioned the afternoon had been super wet and this had then cleared to a cold evening – to combat this Liz led everyone on an epic warm-up session whilst I got held up by various trainer-type things! Eventually I joined everyone, took us through the news, health and safety and general intro.

• The main thing to remember is that we are going to the Queensbury on the evening of the 12th Feb to do the quiz (join for dinner from 7pm and quiz from 8pm!

Once we had gone through the intro and set the backmarkers we set off for the short journey to Mora. Once we got to the school we met Polly the headteacher who was amazed at the number of us and our general enthusiasm to help out. She was worried that we wouldn't have enough to do but as you'll see from the pics there was more than plenty! the task at hand was to empty out a stock cupboard and sort the items and then return them to the cupboard.

With such a large group I left everyone outside to assess the task at hand. As you'd imagine if you leave an energy filled group out in a playground they are going to play. My taskforce instigated a game of stuck in the mud goodgym style. To free those stuck three squats were due.

Playground antics

With the task set and a plan forming in my mind I stopped the game and split the group in two. Nine became the cupboard crew who were tasked with emptying everything out of the cupboard - human chains were very much the order of the day! The second team of ten became the sorting crew - they took everything that was taken out of the cupboard and grouped and sorted items. We had a hall adjacent to the cupboard and this proved the perfect space to get everything out and sort everything.

With such a large task we decided to go long on the task and get as much done as possible. After a good 40 minutes everything was sorted and we had started to return the items. Polly was amazed at how much we had done and I had to force everyone to stop - you guys are the best!

Polly thanked everyone and explained why it was really important to her and the help so appreciated. We said our goodbyes and Polly promised to invite us back for more tasks - we can wait!

With that we headed back to base, stretched and gave ourselves a huge round of applause - what a fantastic evening. We then went on to the queensbury for some cake and drinks to celebrate!

Get yourselves signed up for next week, can we get an even bigger group?

Cheers,
Pritesh

Six hardy runners came to the Queensbury on a very wet Monday evening to splish splash their way down to Cricklewood Baptist Church.

After spending the early part of the evening worrying that she would be left all by herself to clean windows in the rain, Claire was amazed (and a bit relieved!) as one after another, six smiling, slightly soggy runners appeared. It was a mercifully short run to the task, which was initially supposed to be washing outside windows and weeding the pavements around the church (eek!), but Stephen from the church took pity on us and found some indoor tasks for us to get stuck into. Tabitha and Liz donned some rubber gloves and got stuck into cleaning the loos, Joanna and Clare set to getting up a ladder and straightening up the display of flags, and tackling some impressively large cobwebs with a long pole and jay-cloth. Meanwhile, Amy and Samina were also up a ladder, cleaning the hall inside windows and vacuuming up some hard to reach cobwebs with a trusty Henry (he didn't stop smiling!).

It was too wet to stretch when we got back to the Queensbury, but we did manage to stop for a drink and to plan a long-overdue Brent social - diaries coordinated, the best date seemed to be Friday 18th October at Little Bay Restaurant - please do let us know if you'd like to come (send a message in the WhatsApp group, or leave a message here) and we will be booking a table shortly! Hope you can make it.

Thanks again to all the runners for coming out on a soggy night!

Ten fantastic people joined me in Brent for another night of doing good and getting fit. We ran just over 5km, did some mega weeding and celebrated not just one but two of our awesome runners getting to FIFTY good deeds!

A big Brent welcome to Naomi who joined us for the first time. In the news this week we talked about the next social on the 5th September, the fact that Exeter and Trafford GoodGyms are opening and finally the big news...

• Tonight was the both Karen and Samina's 50th good deed! Amazing!

After the excitement of this news I calmed everyone down, they had to get through the good deed first after all! With a quick warm-up dispatched Tabitha led the way to Clitterhouse and before we knew it we were at the Farmhouse.

Once there we met Tina who handed out tools and gloves and we split up to get weeding. Tess handily showed us what was weed and what wasn't and we got to work. Pete and Vinay then moved on to help spread hops on to the compost heap. Aside from smelling deliciously like beer the hops help with the composting process.

Hopping good time!

As well as the actual hops we had another reason to be hopping with joy at tonight's task as we discovered a frog in the garden - he seemed to be having a good time hopping about but we left him be!

With 30 mins of hard flying by before we knew it it was time to leave. Thanks for all your hard work, Tina was certainly impressed at how much we got done! Claire led the way back and once back to base we stretched and properly celebrated Karen and Samina's achievements! Fifty good deeds each is an fantastic and a ton of good deeds between you - wonderful!

Cheers,
Pritesh