Attendance record smashed Amazing evening alert Record amount of photos uploaded

52 people for the Massive Mash Up at Newcastle University and it was kind of a big deal

I got home and immediately needed a lie down following this, our most massive group run to date and a smashed attendance record for Newcastle. I knew this one would be huge, but THIS huge? This massive mash up was the brains and beauty of GoodGymer Maggie (thank you!) who is Newcastle University Students Union officer for sport as well as a popular member of our group.

It was one of those evenings where people just kept arriving and it was great that it was all caught on camera by Katy and Matt from Sharp Life who were joining us to film a piece on GoodGym Newcastle. A quick welcome, a short warm up and round up of the weekend's achievements including hearing from Emily who was part of GoodGym York's Sean's amazing marathon yesterday. His story is here if you need any more inspiration tonight. It felt brilliant to run right through the city centre in such a huge group with so many people around in Northumberland Street seeing a see of red charging past them! Carol Anne thought we should have had some army-esque chant going as we went and it did cross my mind that having an entire cheerleading squad with us tonight should have meant we were prepared for such activity on the way.

GIVE ME A G! G! GIVE ME AN O! O! and so on...

We were met at the University Students Union building by Maggie and Phil and given a brief intro to the tasks that had been arranged for us which were:

• Clearing the storage space where the NEST group store goodies for the refugee community in Newcastle
• Making Wiggly Bags for and writing letters to poorly children in the RVI
• Painting a blackboard and cleaning out jars for the society that supports the Newcastle Food Bank
• Making bird feeders to hang in the trees around campus

Everyone thought they had the best task tonight but I think the wiggly bag group had the edge in that they had music and sweets, although the NEST group did have toys to play with, the bird feeder people got to take spare feeders home and the food bank group got to get clarty (that's Geordie for messy) so I think everyone was a winner. I heard one of the university students passing through and commenting that we were the "Happiest People Ever" so I think the fun we have doing good things was shining out of us tonight. Our commitment showed as Evan turned up a record 40 minutes late having had the journey from hell (and a pint on the way in the students union) kudos Evan

Such a great mix of tasks and everything was smashed within our task timing of just 45 minutes. All of the society leaders were delighted with the impact we were able to make in such a short space of time. The NEST group were all given thank you letters which was such a lovely touch too, and everyone felt really appreciated.

The university campus was a brilliant space for our fitness session: paired running and short-burst exercises in which everyone got sweaty, out of breath and will probably have epic Tuesday Legs from partaking in. We will definitely use the space again, don't think I didn't see those steps, they'll come in handy!

I've already had some fab feedback from some of you this evening so hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be back at the University again hopefully a few times before the end of the year so watch this space, it's definitely one not to miss! Hopefully you will be along next week for our visit to a new Changing Lives project and more people doing good and getting fit, just maybe with less sweets. Sign up here for our visit to Gifford House.

Happy running! Anji

It was our TENTH task for Changing Lives tonight and one of those Group Runs that seemed to have everything!

Can we first have a massive clap for Evan for dragging his shattered quads along to GoodGym tonight after casually smashing out his first ever marathon (and under 4:15!!) at the extremely challenging Kielder Marathon yesterday? I am already on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what his Tuesday Legs are like. There was so much to chat about tonight as it was also our #RunAndTalk session. This week, every GoodGym session will encourage people to #RunAndTalk to improve their mental wellbeing through running and to break down the stigma associated with mental health by getting people talking about it. Carol Anne put it best by telling me "Running makes me a better Mum"

One of our favourite run routes around St James' Park took us to the corner of Westgate Road where Cumberland House thankfully sits at the BOTTOM of the hill! Cumberland House is a Changing Lives project for vulnerable young women in our city and we were stopping off to give a deep clean to all of the communal areas. Carol Anne got her hands on a Hoover for the first time in weeks and everyone was delighted for her! To read more about the amazing work done by Changing Lives or how to help, click here The task owner was so happy with what we did tonight and we left a clean and fresh trail behind us when we left.

Skirting boards scrubbed, cupboards cleaned, windows sheened, and at one point I even found Tom and Tom cleaning the actual walls upstairs. It was a brilliant task to introduce new runner Max to the family and he got really stuck in to both the task and the social (and beer) afterwards.

Kudos Max !

We had a new location for the fitness session tonight, using the pedestrianised area in front of the Core building on St James Boulevard. We did our first Tabata (not Ciabata, Michael) session in which 10 second intervals were followed by 20 second recoveries with the odd charge up a set of steps for good measure.

What else would you do on a Monday night?

Everyone chose to do the whole session despite two options to stop, and the energy was immense. It was like being stood in the middle of a massive head torch-lit hamster wheel of hamsters in red tshirts doing good deeds and getting fit at the same time. Onwards we marched afterwards to the pun for a great catch up over food and drinks and conversation that will never be repeated outside the Mile Castle pub (eh, Dan?)

Next week's Group Run is going to be mega as we do our first big mash up with Newcastle University Students Union. Don't miss out, sign up now

Have a great week knowing that you did great things and changed lives on the way. Happy running!

Anji x