So, I took over the monthly socials in September 2014, it was a great night and we celebrated Becky Greenwood reaching 100 good deeds as well as the other heroes of the month. I think about ten people came... fast forward nearly three years and yes the format has grown, but not only are we rocking exclusive venues but, a stupendous EIGHTY of you came out! I genuinely cannot thank you all enough, it brings me so much joy to see everyone coming together, and the fact you're still bothering to listen to me three years later... Anyway, before i get way way too gushy on to the report:

Heroes

• So last month we decided that we were all gonna work really hard and top spot fell to three awesome GoodGym-ers. Round of applause for Egg Cameron of GG York, David Guest of GG Bristol and Sam Needham of GG Sheffield with 16 good deeds in July. London...must do better ;)

• For the rest of the heroes have a look here till 31st August or have a look at the pic above!

• July saw 13 more people earn their black tshirt having done 50 good deeds and three more joined the exclusive 'GG gives you wings' club with 100 good deeds - congrats to John Shirley of Camden, Melanie Kramers of Tower Hamlets and Pete van Tongeren of Redbridge - give them a cheer!

• The first of the area heroes...for most new runners in July, with a whopping 30 goes to GG Norwich congratulations, only a month into existence and you're topping the leaderboards!

• It's the second month of our new feature and things are hotting up already! Another draw for July between some of GG's heavyweights… with 190 attendances it's GG Bristol and GG Wandsworth Great stuff - who is gonna be the first area to hit 200 in a month?

News

• Races! We have over 60 people taking part in our second trip to Race the Train in Tywyn, Wales. It's gonna be a great trip - technically not too late to enter as you can enter on the day - so keep an eye out on social media! #GGxTrain

• Upcoming we have the New Forest Races, September 10th, which you can very much still sign up for - all the details here! The last of the 'Big Six' on October 8th, the Oxford Half Marathon - details here, if you want early bird entry at £40 then make sure you sign up before August 22nd, it goes up to £45 after!

• Euro Trip! No, the gaudy C4 extravaganza is not back but GGxBucharest is here. The European trip is decided and the best Anglo-French pairing since we decided to build that there Channel Tunnel, Paul and Axel will be keeping you updated on details for that. Ensure you're getting those details by signing up here!

• Make sure you check out the race section of the website for details of all races and check out the Race Team if you want to get a singlet, a discount and get involved in the cross country!

• Media! GoodGym Birmingham are all over your telly boxes at the moment having made an appearance on BBC Midlands Today and ITV's Central News with their fantastic work. Ivo, the founder of GoodGym, also appeared on Radio 4's #FourThought with a wonderful piece on how GoodGym started - I'd recommend a listen no matter how long you've been with GoodGym.

• Finally, we are ever expanding so please spread the news that we are now operating in Barnsley on a Tuesday, Leicester also on a Tuesday and will be opening in Ipswich on Monday 4th September.

Boring Bit

• This month we talked about the GoodGym Shindig which is basically GoodGym's away day but with GG Central, trainers, run leaders and taskforces coming along. We were in the Peak District this year to talk all things GoodGym. Topics covered ranged from diversity to communications, how to grow the numbers doing coach runs to how to keep up variety on group runs! We want to hear what you have to say and at the end of the day if it doesn't work for you it likely won't work for newcomers which leads me to...please please keep on at your trainers with regard to Taskforce, it's your first step to being more involved with GoodGym. As ever, please do also contact me if you want to know more and finally check out more on the shindig, including some notes and actions here.

Guest Speaker

• A huge huge, thanks to Fay Sibley who braved the massive crowd and told us about her amazing story of combining the Land's End to John O'Groats bike ride with GoodGym-ing. Please do donate if you can here!

now for the big one... yes… the…

INTERNATIONAL PUN OF THE MONTH!!!

the winner with a resounding 42 of 103 votes from the night and online...

"Don't chair wish your girlfriend could sand like me" from GG Cardiff; just three months after their launch! Massive congratulations!

...and with that I prove that I can't keep these damn things short! Thanks for sticking with me, it just goes for me to say a massive massive thank you to you all again. EIGHTY of you! Amazing :D Thanks to all of you that came for the first time, i know it's not easy. Big shout out to Beth from GG Worthing, top effort to make it! And, finally, thanks to all of you that clearly did follow the hashtag and prayed for sun! What a night!

Next month we go on tour again and the wonderful people of GG Barnet are hosting - all the details are here but in short, 7th September, 6.30pm The Old White Lion, N2 0NW.

Dates for your diary going forward are 5th October (Angel), 9th November (GG Newham) and December will be out of my hands but we’ll have the "GG-mas Party" which I'll keep you posted on anyway!

That's all from me but get in touch with questions, suggestions and anything else!

Cheers,

Pritesh (pritesh@goodgym.org - 07887802793 - @pritski)

p.s. Please do follow me on twitter, if you can, for many GG related updates and also join the 'Unofficial' Facebook Group here (remember to state your area) for more info on races, training runs, socials and other news from the GG community.

p.p.s. Big thank you to Frances and John for additional photos

The previous week was spent nervously checking the weather forecast. Legs itching to run. In the final few days the carb loading commenced.

And after all those months of training the day finally came.

The sun shone (contrary to the forecast for cloud), the temperatures rose, and a record 40,382 people took part.

Some were running their first marathon, others were seasoned pros, but every member of Team GoodGym got out there and ran their very hardest. There was sweat, there was probably blood, there was sunburn and there was definitely chafing but we did it!

Special thanks too to the cheer crews who came along to support - you gave us all a boost when we needed it.

Firstly huge apologies for the late-ness of the drinks report...I think I have just about recovered!

So a whopping FIFTY ONE, yup, 51 of you turned up to celebrate the heroes of August and generally just let anyone that was listening that South London is the place to be! It was a fantastic sight to see with so many of you there to hear yet another ridiculous speech from myself and just hang out and be so "GoodGym-y"! Loved it!

As this is late I am going to keep it short so here's a recap on what was said:

Heroes

As ever, until the 30th September you can hit this link to see the heroes data in more detail!

James Poole topped distance with 574.8km...will anyone knock him off the top spot? We had some honourable mentions for Paul Bown and Patrick Luong who hit 320 and 267km respectively - some full-on marathon training happening for both those guys!

In what I have recently termed the 'Bristol Leagues' we had a non-Bristol winner! Most cheers given this month by one Simon Loughran (that's pronounced Lochran btw) with an incredible 2139 cheers - did he actually manage to lead any of his runs?! A small number of those must've found their way to our most cheered runner this month, with 256 cheers it's Paul Becker...from Bristol!

Topping the good deeds table last month we had a return for Patrick Luong with 21 good deeds, couple with all his marathon training that is a great achievement!

Now to the coveted most new runners in the last month award...continuing our trend of new boroughs winning this accolade it's... Wandsworth with 62 new runners in August! Congratulations and keep telling everyone about GoodGym so you can boost your area's numbers!

I had some issues with my 50s and 100s data last month so apologies if I've missed you off but otherwise a warm and very well deserved welcome to Cecilia to the Black T-shirt club with 50 good deeds and getting their wings with a wonderful 100 good deeds is Graham Atkins and Antonia Kanczula! Congrats and make sure you give them a cheer!

News

Two of our previous guest speakers completed their challenges in the last month – Melissa 'Moosenshoes' got thru her #runtheboroughs challenge and George 'Ironman' Bright completed his first ever Ironman in an incredible time of 10 hours and 28 minutes! Fantastic achievements!

We also had Danica Priest completing the Rejkjavik Half Marathon and the Race for life Half marathon, Sarah Moore joining her in the Race for Life Half – well done to you!

We’ve our last (official) race of the year coming up in Cardiff – we’re looking forward to that and a number of other races are taking places with marathons over the next month for a number of GG runners – good luck!

International Pun of the Month

A great set of puns this month, 10 on the long-list, we had 46 votes on the night and for their first ever win with 17 votes (37% of the vote)…

Only tools and (task) forces from Wandsworth!!!

Well done guys!

Right that is that, thanks again for all coming and apologies for the delay with this. Look forward to seeing you all next month, we’ll be in Angel, it’ll be my birthday – it will be a blast!

Cheers,

Pritesh

p.s. Also thank you to Anonymous who found the time to pen me a letter during drinks - see pic!

p.p.s Massive thanks to John for taking some photos on the night as I completely forgot!

22 GoodGymers ran between 4-7km, gardened for Sheltered Housing, worked the Skip Garden compost machine and litter picked!

Triple tasking, love it! Welcome to newcomer Caroline, it's great to have you along and awesome to meet you!

In the news this week:

• We said farewell to Lucia Gobbi, Coach Runner Rep and awesome GGer, who is off to Italy to learn how to be a Roman for 4 months. See you soon LG!
• Tonight is GG Monthly Drinks down in Brixton, there'll be International Pun of the Month, Heroes and Pritesh standing on a chair! Sign up here and see you there!

Right triple tasking means triple reporting, first up Litter Picking by PB:

After an active warm up with the entire group we split in three directions to do good and get fit in the wonderful Camden. Litter picking, as ever is important and helps keep our local parks and community areas cleaner and more welcoming. Seven of us headed over to the local Somers Town Park to do just that, getting into pairs we spread across the park and picked all the rubbish.

Beer bottles!

After 15 minutes of picking up bottles, cigarettes, cans, wrappers and more. With a surprise final weigh in Liv and Arnulfo were the winners. We then ran over to Skip Garden to meet the other group.

Skip Garden Run Report by Lucia Gobbi

Seven of us were greeted at the skip garden by the lovely Paul and given three jobs to do. One group quickly got to raking the gravel as gaps had started to appear and it needed some 'tlc'. The rest of us worked our arms at the compost machine. We turned and also sieved the compost coming out, it was warm and VERY fragrant! Mmmmmm....

Did it smell LG?

With the two task groups combined we headed to Granary Square to do a fitness session. It went something like this:

1. Socket to Pocket Technique session
2. Progression Running around the square
3. Drill & tag game - mountain climbers, squats and an amazing looking at the moon pose!
4. Monthly Time Trial!

Time Trial results:

3.14 - Sarah H 3.16 - Anthony 3.18 - Lucia 3.22 - Arnulfo 3.31 - Laura 3.39 - Damaris 3.53 - Becky 3.56 - Caroline 3.58 - Freya 4.10 - Sarah R

Sheltered Housing Run Report by Pritesh:

Eight of us headed up to Kentish Town, it really wasn't a night for running with it being very humid and hot. We had a two mile journey and were ably led by Chris. We arrived at Ashdown Crescent Sheltered Housing and there met Cathi, the Sheltered Housing Manager. She outlined the task, we had some leaf collecting, digging and pruning to do! We all split in to our groups and worked solidly for 30 minutes! The garden looked great and it was a really nice task. Before we left we were treated to some refreshments (shock horror - biscuits in C and learned all about the Sheltered Housing scheme which helps adults 65 and over who need some assistance but can still live on their own. It was really good to learn about who we were helping and we hope to come back and help out more! With that we headed back to base for a good stretch down!

Sign up for next week here.

PB out.

9 runners met on a sunny night to run 4km whilst wheeling trees around Peckham.

With the sun shining, transport only slightly delayed and some willing hands, legs and backs, we ran a short distance to Peckham Multiplex to meet Asha, Creative Director for the inaugral Peckham Festival celebrating all things and people cultural in Peckham and around.

She had a load of trees in metal wheeled bins to be pushed about 1km from the Cinema to Copeland Park where the festival is taking place.

We split into teams of 3 with Asha as our front woman leading the way and making sure cars had spotted us and that we were still going to get under the bridges and powerlines with the super big trees.

Trees on wheels

It took some serious muscle pushing the bins particularly on some road that could do with attention. It was a task that took brains as well as brawn with some tight spaces to squeeze through.

Celebs for a night

I'm not sure the people of Peckham have witnessed wheelie trees before so we were snapped and have no doubt been posted to social media sites.

We did the effort twice, moving all the trees that weren't being used as bicycle racks. 6 trees in place two weeks before the festival is pretty good going and the festival team were pretty pleased with our efforts and very grateful for the help. We beat their pb!

Special thanks to Asha who was wearing jeans and carrying a handbag but still jogged with us on our way back for round two.

Not content with moving the earth, we went for a quick session on the Rye involving pairs, running round a Willow Tree and various core exercises to help speed.

We finished up sweaty and pleased with a bit of a different task complete and an all over workout.

Special thanks to Will's brain for this weeks pun title.