A bunch of wonderful employees from Fox Networks walked 3km to help clear plastic on the Thames!

It was a beautiful bright and sunny day in Hammersmith, perfect timing for the final GoodGym 21CF Impact Week event!

Yesterday we headed out for a delightful walk along the Thames to the Crabtree pub to pick up plastic and other litter from the shoreline. We were greeted by the lovely Carolyn from The Whale Company who gave us all a little insight of what was to come and told us her story of how her and her partner raised awareness of the issue by paddling 12 marathons in 12 countries on their paddle boards made out of plastic bottles! Incredible!!

After handing out gloves, bin bags and litter pickers, we jumped/clambered/crawled over the wall to get to the waterside and immediately got stuck in! It was quite amazing how much stuff there was. What I personally found most surprising was the amount of micro-plastic... you could literally just sit there for days sifting it out, there was that much of it, and sadly that is the kind of stuff that gets eaten by seabirds and marine animals resulting in millions of deaths each year. Apparently there are more pieces of microplastic in our oceans than there are stars in our galaxy.... CRAZY!!!!!!

We had 30 minutes to clear as much as possible. We cleared a lot of the immediate area fairly quickly so a few people branched out past the sludge and hit the jackpot around the corner. There were so many plastic cups, bottle tops, lollipop sticks, straws, plastic bottles... they came back with quite the haul!

After half an hour we regrouped and sorted the plastics from the general waste, took a nice big group shot and then headed back to the office after another good deed accomplished!

Great job yesterday everyone. It was lovely to meet you all and well done for getting so stuck in and getting so much done. I know I will definitely be thinking twice next time I buy a bottle of water, having picked up about 50 bottle tops! I hope you enjoyed your week of GoodGym runs and walks. Remember to have a look on the GoodGym website for group runs like this in your area, they happen every week in the evenings so there are loads more opportunities for you to get fit while good! Hopefully see you at a GoodGym run soon!

33 Fox employees ran 5km to do a river clean up - helping London Sports Trust, Active 360 and Drink Water Campaign

Thank you all for coming along and experiencing GoodGym as part of your Impact Week 21CF. Our aim is to do good and get fit at the same time - you definitely did that!

So a bit about GoodGym, Ivo Gormley founded this wonderful charity nearly nine years ago for people to do good and get fit! Our mission is to help our communities with physical tasks and reduce loneliness through projects with older persons. There are three ways of doing good with us:

1. First way is a group run, which you went on last night. As a group we meet in 45 areas around the UK on a weekly basis, we run to local charity do something physical for 30 minutes and run back.
2. Missions - these are one off and happen with 2-4 people, the idea is to help older persons in their home with something like setting up a hospital bed, moving furniture or gardening.
3. Coach Running - this is where you go visit an old isolated person once a week to have a chat and keep them company. Back to yesterday, we met on a beautifully sunny morning in Hammersmith, after our intro and warm up we headed to the river. Meeting Sam and Paul at the slipway they had all the tools ready for us.

Introducing themselves first off Paul explained how Active 360 aims to reduce plastic and waste in the Thames, while In the Drink Project aims to educate people and businesses at the source to not throw away single plastic cups or anything else into the river. Sam introduced London Sports Trust, an organisation that aims to get more adults and children involved in water sports, they unfortunately come across lots of litter during their activities so get involved in clean ups.

Armed with litter picks, latex gloves and heavy duty bags everyone split into teams and started picking. Initially the entire group started off on the slipway, giving it a deep clean and finding a couple of phones!

Next splitting into smaller groups the team made their way along the shoreline and under the bridge. The litter here seemed endless and everyone did a great job picking it up.

In over an hour we bagged up 15 bags of litter and made a huge impact to our community. That's over 30 hours of work done right there - wow!

Fox File

After taking a group picture we headed along the river for our run, some conditioning exercises and the inaugural Fox File - awesome! Everyone ran 5km and a splitter group run even more which is great. Well done!

Enjoy your last GoodGym run/walk tomorrow and join Hammersmith Goodgym on Tuesday nights here.

PB out

28 Fox runners tackled a monster 9k run to help a community garden in Ladbroke Grove as part of 21CF Impact week!

The Sun was our and smiles were all about the wonderful Fox runners as they tackled challenging 9k run along West London’s streets.

With everyone focused on the tasks ahead we warmed up with a dynamic mob street dynamic stretch and muscle activation before weaving our way North along the quieter back streets to Ladbroke Grove.

Everybody working hard and enjoying the chance for a sunshine filled adventure, making steady progress to the community Garden.

Meeting Lisa and Martin who oversee around 70 community gardens in the borough. We had plenty to do!! A very keep and dedicated group set to work on constructing a mini shed/lock box to house the tools and equipment needed to maintain the garden up to the high standards we left it in. Lots of team work and careful instruction reading/following was the order of the day. Piece by piece, screw by screw the shed cane to life and will be a vital Piece of getting the community garden to thieve in the coming months!!

The rest of the Crew were hard at work! Filling a van full of heavy duty rubbish including BBQ’s, lumps of wood and chunks of metal frame. Clearing the patio path of all weeds and grass that was poking through. Cutting back all the overgrown shrubs and in clearing all the flower beds!!

With the garden looking stunning after 35 minutes of non stop action we began the run back with a Spring in our steps!! Picking up the pace at the front it was great to see everyone dig in to complete a really strong 2 hours of physical activity!!

Hope you enjoyed the session and go well in the rest of impact week.

Smooth Running

Joel

Nine Fox Employees walked 3km, helped Studio Hache and did a park fitness session

Thanks for coming along to the first session of four Impact Week 21CF walks/runs!

So a bit about GoodGym, Ivo Gormley founded this wonderful charity nearly nine years ago for people to do good and get fit! Our mission is to help our communities with physical tasks and reduce loneliness through projects with older persons. There are three ways of doing good with us:

1. First way is a group run, which you went on last night. As a group we meet in 45 areas around the UK on a weekly basis, we run to local charity do something physical for 30 minutes and run back.
2. Missions - these are one off and happen with 2-4 people, the idea is to help older persons in their home with something like setting up a hospital bed, moving furniture or gardening.
3. Coach Running - this is where you go visit an old isolated person once a week to have a chat and keep them company.

After the intro we headed towards Shepherds Bush Market along the lovely sunny backstreets of West London. We headed through the historical market to help Studio Hache - an Arts Community Project for 7-16 year olds. On Sunday they are a big family activities day so had plenty for us to backup.

Splitting into pairs we got going with the following tasks:

• Cleaning shelves and then packing up materials to put back on them.
• Taking plastic tap off the glass - apparently very therapeutic!
• Sorting out papper trays and materials to be packed away
• Taking down the wall display and getting the nails out of the wall with a hammer.

Over 30 minutes we got so much done for Hanna and Stuff Hache - approximately 3 hours work - amazing!

GOOD stuff

Next week headed to the local park to do some conditioning exercises. First off we warmed up - loosening our muscles up, next week focused on our balance & calf strength, following this we did a glutes routine and then a game - on the minute for a minute! Nice!

Check out GoodGym Hammersmith and Fulham Group runs that meet on a Tuesday evening.

Enjoy the runs over the next few days.

PB out