Twen-TREE Twen-TREE began with 22 TREE-mendous H&F runners TREE-cycling Christmas TREEs from the surrounding streets and roads in H&F! 🎄

It was so great to be back after the 2 week festive break! There was lots of new shiny running gear from Santa on display along with the beaming smiles and sea of red t-shirts in the BetterGym reception area, along with catch-up chats aplenty and some friendly banter...will Katie make it on time? Who is more competitive, Helen or Lucy? 😀

A big welcome along to Annabelle and Petra who joined us tonight for their first GoodGym H&F group run. Really lovely to see everyone, thank you all for coming along!

With everyone signed in and raring to go, in PINE with our usual formalities we all headed outside for a quick intro and round of all the news...

Who's PINE is it anyway?

1. January Challenge 2020 - Yes it's the time of year again! This month, GoodGym'ers from every area have been challenged to run or walk as far as they can and to complete as many good deeds as possible. There's also the additional challenge to have as many participants as possible. There's lots of upcoming Community Missions, check them all out here.

You check on H&F's progress in the GoodGym leagues here. Make sure you link your Strava account to ensure your running and walking efforts are counted!

1. RED January - GoodGym have partnered with RED January this year. RED January supports mental health by encouraging everyone to be active every day. Well done to those that have managed 7 active days so far!

2. Winter Warriors - Well done to all those who completed a Community Mission or Mission over the festive break and earnt your Winter Warrior badge!

3. Love Trails 2020 - Weekend of 2nd-5th July. GoodGym York are organising discounted group tickets, if you would like to go along check out the 'Unofficial Unofficial GoodGym' Facebook group.

And.....WELL DONE to Cookie who achieved a 10km PB at the weekend! 🙌

Phew! Lots of news to get us kicked off in 2020.

To TREE, or not to TREE?

Tonight's task was to hunt for abandoned Christmas Trees left on and around surrounding streets and roads in H&F (especially those that posed a hazard to pedestrians, cyclists or cars) and carry them to the various tree-cycling collection points in the area so that they could be composted. A task that would both help the community and provide a great upper-body workout at the same time! 💪

Doing things by T(h)REES

Following a quick warm-up to get the blood pumping and pulses raised the group were split into three equal teams, with three festively named or dressed team leaders....Ca-TREE-na, CHRIS-tmas, and Helen in her festive green tee.

Each team were given a specific area to focus their neighbourhood sprucing effects on, along with the nearest tree-cycling collection point. In addition, there were also 10 scavenger hunt challenges that included the following: find something red or green, spot some Christmas lights, a group wall sit challenge, group selfie photo, the PINE-st festive puns/jokes, spot something beginning with H or F, the handing out of three GoodGym flyers and a bonus pub name scrabble score. All three teams had an hour to hunt Christmas Trees and complete the scavenger hunt before meeting back at 8.20pm.

Time to BRANCH out into the community!

With everyone gloved-up and briefed around the area they were hunting for abandoned Christmas Trees all three teams set off on their hunt. There were lots of Christmas Trees strewn around on street corners and in the roads, and it wasn't long before Christmas Trees were being gathered and expertly carried by everyone to the tree-cycling collection points.

FIR-king hard work!

Working in pairs the teams hunted and carried Christmas Trees, weaving around the streets and making numerous tree drop-offs to the tree-cycling collection points - with a few puzzled looks from people we passed on the streets and in pubs!

Up near Cathnor Park, Rosie and Sarah came across an enormous Christmas Tree outside a pub which still had lights attached to it. Someone (definitely not me! 👀) suggested removing the lights and throwing them away before carrying it to the tree-cycling collection point. They turned out to be very very tangled lights, explaining why they had not been removed in the first place. After 10 minutes of wrestling with the tree and the tangles Rosie popped into the pub and returned with a pair of wires cutters, finally success!!

Meanwhile, CaTREEna's and Helen's team were busy piling up the Christmas Trees outside Loris Community Gardens and scavenger hunting! Bev posed with a old Christmas wreath, Maddy with an old and lonely Christmas tree decoration, Biscuits with a tree that had well and truly branches out, and Andrew with a Christmas Tree which looked so dead it must've been from 2018 or sat atop a radiator the entire festive period!

Jonny was also showcasing his new balancing act...

Everyone was TREE-rifically TREE-iumphant!

Team 1 - CaTREEna's Dream TREEam ran 4km and collected 40 trees Team 2 - TREE me, TREE you ran 4.5km and collected 24 trees Team 3 - Firotious ran 5km and collected 17 trees

In total, a massive 81 Christmas Trees were collected and tree-cycled in, they'll not only be composted but also no longer pose a hazard for others! Well done to Team 1, who collected the most trees and came up with the 45 point scrabble point win for "The Hammersmith Draft House", but overall, everyone was a winner!

Thank you all for the top photos, so nice to have some sharp clear photos! And for the puns and jokes, most of which I have used in the run report! Some additional Christmas crackers for you...

Who hides in the bakery at Christmas?....A mince spy!

What do you call a Scotsman holding a Christmas Tree?.....Robert the Spruce!

Time to stop needles-ly pining for puns? Never!

Time to PINE tune our muscles

Amazingly, every arrived back at base by 8.22pm which meant there was time for a quick 4-minute legs blast! In order to balance out the upper-arm workout from carrying the Christmas Trees. The team wonderFIRlly smashed out some pistol-squats, snowboard squat jumps, frogs jumps, power lunges and jump squats, all great exercises that build muscle strength and endurance to aid running. We finished off the night with some stretches and a super albeit slightly-blinding (sorry team!) group photo.

That's all FIR now folks!

Thank you all FIR coming along and for all your TREE-ific efforts tonight team. Have a great rest of your week! Sign up for next week's run here. Don't forget it's the monthly social following the run!

A big thank you to Catriona, Helen & Chris for leading the teams tonight and to all those taking photos and coming up with brilliant puns and jokes!

The dark, wet and windy conditions didn't put off 17 wonderful GoodGym'ers from joining me to help out at Springvale Residents Tenants Hall tonight. There weren't any newbies to welcome along tonight but it was lovely to have one GoodGym tourist, Sam join us for the evening.

With everyone gathered we headed outside to the covered car park area for a very brief intro and the weekly news:

1. H&F Community Mission I - Age UK H&F's Christmas party is on Thursday 12th December. Please let Johnny aka Biscuits know when you will be arriving to lend a hand if you've signed up.
2. H&F Community Mission II - Notting Hill Genesis on Friday 13th December from 1-4pm, help sort donated food and gifts, please sign up here.
3. H&F Community Mission III- Operation hall prep for Shepherd Bush Families Project on Tuesday 17th December from 5.30-6.30pm, help move furniture out of the hall, please sign up here.
4. Win a limited-edition GoodGym sweatshirt 👕 - bring a friend to a community mission in December and post the story of your community mission on social media with the tag #winterwarriors. All the details can be found here.

Rebels with a Claus!

Well done to Alice, Speedy, Mo and Andrew for completing the Santa Dash 🎅 at Brockwell Park and to Matt, Eloise and Lucy for completing the Osterley 10k 🙌🏼.

Railing by

We had a quick warm-up and stretch to get the pulses raised before we headed off on our short run over to Springvale Tenants Hall. En route we had a brief stop to regroup and Cookie chose a somewhat uncomfortable 30 second railing wall sit for the group which everyone really thanked him for! Railing wall sit complete we continued on the last part of our run with Matt reminding us that he'd never done a task in the rain!! Surely that streak was about to end tonight?!

Beating around the push

Once we discovered the garden gate was in fact already open and just required a gentle push, we headed inside where we were greeted by the ever smiley, Berni who ran through the list of jobs for the evening:

• Sweep up and bag the leaves from the garden area 🍂
• Move the benches and cover them with a tarpaulin 💪
• Hoover the inside of the hall 🧱
• Clean the mirrors and radiators in the hall 🧽

The group divided in two; one half of the group headed outside to sweep and bag all the leaves, and then move the benches. Andrew, Tom, Matt, Sarah and Katie worked superbly as a team as they swept and bagged all the leaves with only a couple of brooms, a dust pan & brush, and some bin bags. Jackie and Annabel worked their tetris magic as they got two of the benches moved and covered with a tarpaulin with supreme speed and efficiency. Andrew and Arba had obviously taken note as they moved the final two benches with equal efficiency!

Time to reflect

Back inside, the other half of the group were cleaning the mirrors and radiators while Lucy hoovered the floor making sure it was spotless! Some of the group also took a moment to admire the wall of photos from our previous visits, complete with a red GoodGym tee that Berni has created as a thank you from all the residents - what a lovely gesture!

With all the jobs completed and the hall looking spick and span ready to host the polling on Thursday, the team tucked into the impressive array of treats that Berni had kindly provided for us as a big thank you for all our help tonight and over the past year.

Deep in the Sally

Before we headed off back to base we made use of the nice and dry indoor hall for tonight's fitness session. The first was requested by Tom last week (...well that's what I heard anyway!), one of the team's old favourites, 'Sally Squats'! 3mins 25seconds of squatting, what's not to love?! I think everyone felt the glute burn! The next was decided by a very democratic vote, the 'Roxanne press-up challenge', with a press-up done every time Sting sung "Roxanne"...a whole 27 times for those who were wondering!

Fitness session complete we took a very creative and artistic photo in one of the mirrors under the direction of Biscuits and Speedy. We then said our goodbyes and Merry Christmas to Berni and headed back to base for our cool down and stretch off. Great work tonight team, thank you for coming along and for all your hard work.

DON’T FORGET, THURSDAY IS POLLING DAY! 📝

Next week it's our last run of 2019 (and the decade!), we'll be heading up to the Nubian Life Resource Centre to help out at their Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. Sign up here. Have a lovely rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week, if not, Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!

450 leaflets distributed and 6km run by 22 GoodGym'ers? I don't be-leaf it!

On what threatened to be a wet and miserable evening, a lovely mild and dry (thankfully!) evening greeting us in H&F. An amazing 21 GoodGym'ers joined me tonight to run and spread the word about some wonderful local charities.

Baptism of flyer

Tonight it was lovely to welcome along Lauren and Tatjana to their first H&F group run, thank you both for coming along and lending some extra hands tonight, hope you enjoyed it! And thank you as always to my wonderful regulars 😊.

Today’s task was the distribution of leaflets for Open Age UK H&F, posters for Food2You and some postcards for Age UK H&F around the streets of Hammersmith. So what do all these local charities do and provide I hear you ask?...

• Open Age H&F provide hundreds of weekly activities for local residents aged 50+ to sustain their physical and mental fitness, maintain an active lifestyle and develop new and stimulating interests.
• Food2You, a grocery delivery service run by Age UK for vulnerable, isolated older people who can't do their own shopping. It will be up and running in Hammersmith & Fulham very soon and they are currently looking for volunteers to drive the delivery vans and assist with co-ordination.
• Age UK H&F offer services for the over 50s, these range from home cooked meals to physical activity classes to IT classes, led by the man himself, Johnny Wren. Part of the programme Johnny is heading up is getting those in the community more IT literate, and one side of the postcard promoted this service. The other side was a call for more volunteers.

Flyer flyer pants on flyer!

Following a pulse-raising warm-up and a quick-fire number game we set off towards Shepherd’s Bush and White City, weaving in and around pedestrians and puddles (some were more successful than others at the latter!) and regrouped at Shepherd's Bush Green.

Before continuing on, we smashed out tonight’s fitness session of “When I went to GoodGym H&F...”. This was based on the school game, except with exercises. Everyone was challenged to both remember and do all the previous exercises, and add in an additional exercise and repetition.

We called it a day when we reached Sarah at number 14 and had the following list: 1 squat, 2 twists, 3 lunges, 4 knee raises, 5 jumping jacks, 6 jumps, 7 ‘funky chickens’, 8 punches, 9 left-leg hops, 10 right-leg hops, 11 spotty dogs, 12 star jumps, 13 press-ups and 14 windmills. Cake and biscuits was also mentioned, but sadly today no-where to be seen (until next week...).

Which, by my calculations worked out as a grand total of: 14 squats, 26 twists, 36 lunges, 44 knee raises, 50 jumping jacks, 54 jumps, 56 ‘funky chickens’, 56 punches, 54 left-leg hops, 50 right-leg hops, 44 spotty dogs, 36 star jumps, 26 press-ups and 14 windmills. Phew! Great work team, 14 exercises and a whopping 560 repetitions done in total 🙌🏼. There was also the bonus of “We went to GoodGym H&F and got some ‘motivational’ heckles from some kids on bikes!” 🗣🚲 as captured and captioned by Lucy on the ‘gram! @goodgym_hf for those not yet following.

Make like a tree...and leaf-let

Fitness completed we continued on our run. We reached Shepherd’s Bush Road and headed down one of the adjoining side streets. The team split into two and implemented the efficient 'flyer chain' down all the streets with perfection. With some helpful local knowledge from Lauren about a cut-through the large pile of leaflet quickly began to diminish and after 40 minutes of leafleting door-to-door the team had covered a substantial amount of the surrounding side streets.

Realising that we had yet to get a team photo with our leaflets, in a case of déjà vu from last week we headed towards the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. Once outside we inspected the level of leaf fall over the past week and grouped together for some team photos, and under direction from team photographer, Mo, we struck a fabulous ‘flexed’ pose 💪🏼. In the words of Mo, “that’s lovely that!”

Time flyers when you're having fun!

With time flying (as it always does!) we began our run back to base armed with one Food2You poster each. The challenge was to get the poster displayed in a shop, supermarket or local convenience store. In a classic case of speaking too soon about it being an early Christmas miracle that no-one had been lost, as we reached Shepherd's Bush Green again we realised that we were 3 GoodGym'ers short! Thankfully the yellow viz of Johnny was soon spotted running with Rosie and Tatty!

With a handful of Food2You posters successfully delivered and displayed, and most importantly, everyone present and correct, we all headed off on our short run back to base for a stretch off and then back home. Another good deed done! Thank you for all your hard work and efforts tonight team...560 exercise repetitions and around 450 leaflets delivered, boom!

Shoutouts 📣

• A big well done to Matt who got not one but TWO PBs at the weekend!! 🥳🙌🏼.
• Well done to Alice and 'Speedy Jonzales', Jonny Knight for completing the Spartan Stadion Race at Twickenham! 🙌
• Thank you to all my backmarkers, and to Mo for his fantastic camera work as always 📸.
  

News 📰

1. H&F Community Mission - Age UK H&F's Christmas party is on Thursday 12th December. Please sign up here if you can lend a hand anytime between 4pm-8.30pm.
2. Other local Community Missions - Tree planting in Chiswick on Saturday 30th November, all the details are here.
3. Santa Dash 🎅- Sunday 8th December at Brockwell Park. Run a 5k or 10k dressed as Santa! All the details are here - Andrew has kindly created a team called 'GoodGym H&F'.
4. GG-all areas Christmas party 🎅🎄⛄🎉 - Friday 6th December. Places are limited so make sure you sign up! All the details are here.

Next week, we’ll be spreading some Christmas cheer as we will be delivering some Christmas Cards for H&F Foodbank around Fulham. Please sign up here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!

The leafs have leaft the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden thanks to the hard work of GoodGym H&F

Tonight there was the 'great debate' on ITV, at GoodGym H&F however, our great debates tend to be around 'weed or not a weed?' and the big questions in life such as 'what is your favourite pudding and what animal would you rather be?' - I feel we do a good job at putting the world to rights!

Despite the noticeable cooler temperature due to a cold front from the North Pole*, 14 other GoodGym'ers joined me for tonight's task at the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden.

Big welcome to our new runner tonight, Rosie who joined us for her first GoodGym H&F group run - thank you for coming along, hope you enjoyed it! And great to see Analiese (our new token Kiwi!) back for her second run.

With everyone layered up and ready we headed outside for our news round-up and warm-up...

Some pro-leaf-ic running...

We started off the evening by first congratulating our Fulham 10k runners...Lucy, Jonny, Alice and Arba. Well done all and congratulations Alice on the new PB!! 🙌🏼🥳

We also congratulated Tom on his tough Maverick Trail race, one of those 'flat' races with a brutal 217m of elevation!

In other news...

1. H&F Community Mission - Thursday 12th December for Age UK H&F's Christmas Party. Please sign up here if you can lend a hand anytime between 4pm-8.30pm.
2. GoodGym have teamed up with food poverty charity FareShare and Tesco to help people struggling with hunger in a series of community missions. There's one happening in Wimbledon Metro on Saturday 23rd November. For all the details, click [here].
3. GG Training Run - 13 Bridges Battersea - Tower - Sunday 24th November. All the details are here.
4. FoodCycle, East Acton - Volunteer to cook community meals from surplus foods. All the details are here - if interested, speak to Cookie and he can make it a Community Mission!
   

Leaf it out!

Before we headed off on our run we had a quick warm-up comprising of some high knees, jumping jacks, spotty dogs, lunges and some perfectly executed side-to-sides, both clockwise and anti-clockwise! With everyone nicely warmed up we headed off through the busy streets of Hammersmith up towards Shepherd’s Bush, pausing briefly for the beloved wall sit en route.

Matt, Tom and Andrew kindly continued on up the road to distribute about half a dozen leaflets for Open Age H&F, a charity which provides hundreds of weekly activities for local residents aged 50+ to sustain their physical and mental fitness, maintain an active lifestyle and develop new and stimulating interests - the good news is we'll be distrubuting more of these leaflets next week!

As it was a good few degrees colder than of late we had a nice brisk run up and it wasn't long before we'd weaved our way round pedestrians and zig-zagged through the streets to reach the Nubian Life Centre. In perfect synchronisation, we arrived with Matt, Tom and Andrew who appeared in the darkness from the opposite direction.

Read it and sweep!

We entered into the Josiah Briathwaite Community Garden, part of the Nubian Life Centre, and were greeted by the lovely, Susannah. The Nubian Life Centre provides adult day care services for the Afro-Caribbean community with health issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer's and Susannah explained that the garden was used by the elders at weekends to grow organic and medicinal food, and as a safe space for children to explore and find all the bugs!

Susannah went on to give us an interesting gardening lesson around the benefits of green manure and the permaculture principles to restore fertility and nitrogen to the soil, and the Gardeners' World visit last year - check it out here.

Tonight's full list of tasks to be done that Susannah ran through with the group were:

• Planting green manure 🌱
• Sweeping the patio and paths 🧹
• Removing and cutting up the old climbers ✂️
• Raking and collecting all the leaves from the grass 🍂
• Fixing up the new signs for the garden 🔨

Green manure planting that's a cut above the rest

Matt and Marissa got stuck into the garden bed with the assistance of some secateurs to cut the dead plants. Eloise, Tom and Andrew worked together to remove and cut up the dead climbers from the dead garden bed and began the planting of the green manure.

A clean sweep

Opting for the brushes were Rosie, Analiese and Johnny who teamed up to give the paths and patio a good sweep, with Johnny taking on the important role of bag holder in Sarah's absence.

Rake that leaves

Lucy, with her new found love of the rake, systematically raked the garden and formed many a piles of leaves that Andrew and Tom efficiently collected and bagged using the 'handy' hand-scooping tool. Cookie ensured the new signs for the garden were securely put up, while Alice and Sarah got fully stuck into the garden beds, meticulously combing through the plants to remove all the leaves that had fallen, forming yet more piles of leaves!

With the time coming to call it a night, everyone finished up with their jobs, piled up the 5 bags of leaves and garden waste, and branched out for a team photo around the tree. Susannah was incredibly appreciative of the teams hard work and efforts to get the entire list of jobs completed as they have a visited from their funders tomorrow - what good timing for a GoodGym style garden makeover!

Check out the transformation!....

We said our final thankyous and goodbyes and began our run back to base. En route back we bumped into two familar faces in GG tees, Jonny and Mo, who earned their good deed by delivering the final Open Age H&F leaflet. Back at base, Mo kindly led the cool down and stretch off before everyone headed home to the warm! Great job team. Amazing work as always!

Next week we're we're leafleting and postering for two local charities, Open Age H&F and Food2You. Please sign up here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!

*according to the Metro, other newspapers are available!

GoodGym H&F went off with a bang! Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and trot....

On a chilly Tuesday evening, 14 H&F GoodGymmers forwent bonfires and instead chose to watch the bangs, pops and fizzes from firework displays on a their run to help out a local church.

A big hello and welcome along to GoodGym H&F to Melissa, thank you for coming along.

News

1. H&F Community Missions - 2 on Saturday! Help pack containers for ERASE Foundation from 9.30-10.30am, all the details are here followed bythe 'Big Planting Event' at Wormholt Park, all the details are here if you can lend a hand anytime between 11am-3pm.
2. Unofficial GG10 party 🔟🎉 - this Friday! At Topolski Bar on the Southbank. All the details are here.
3. GG Christmas party 🎄🎉 - Friday 6th December. Places are limited so make sure you sign up early! All the details are here.

There was some brilliant racing at the weekend....well done to Katie and Eloise in the Richmond Half and to Lucy in the Billericay Striders 10k 🏅🥳🙌🏼 .

Spot my mojo working

Before we headed to the streets we did a quick pulse raising warm-up that began with some high knees, jumping jacks and Johnny Wren's favourite, spotty dogs - he's definitely becoming a pro at these now! This was followed by some different movements when certain numbers were shouted out and some dynamic stretches.

Nicely warmed-up we headed down towards our task tonight at Parsons Green. With it being bonfire night and a Chelsea home game the streets were a lot fuller than normal! Following lots of weaving around pedestrians, and a brief pause for a wall sit while we waited for lights to turn green, we eventually arrived at St Dionis Church.

Orange you glad it's Autumn!

We managed to track down the church vicar, Tim who warmly welcomed everyone to the church amongst the lovely Autumnal colours of the fallen leaves. He explained to the group that tonight's task was to give the garden area and sides of the church a lovely spruce up through some leaf clearing and weed removal.

The church has been closed for refurbishment for the past 6 months and Sunday at 3pm is their grand reopening. It was our job tonight to provide the all inportant tidy up to leave a good first impression, because as Tim humourously said " you can never make a first impression again!"

No sight for saw eyes as GG H&F stand & de-leaf-er

The team gloved up and quickly set about filling green garden bags with weeds and leaves. Lucy and Jonny teamed up for the great rake off and large 'scooping hands' combo while everyone else got stuck in with their hands.

Following last week's strong winds there were a number of large fallen branches that also needed to be removed. Henry and Katie armed themselves with a saw and set about cutting the branches into smaller pieces so that they could be used as fire wood.

Raking it happen

After 30 minutes of raking, collecting handful after handful of leaves, sawing of branches and gravel de-weeding we called it a night. The result of all this hard work was 10 full garden bags and one immaculately looking garden area, one that would definitely give a great first impression!

Tim led us inside and treated us to a sneak peak of the refurbished church. And wow, it was stunning! We took the opportunity to get a team photo under the church's arches and bright lights before we said our goodbyes to Tim and headed off on our run back to base.

We'll keep you postered

En route we stopped at some local supermarkets and shops to distribute some posters for Food2You, a grocery delivery service for vulnerable, isolated older people who can't do their own shopping. It will be up and running in Hammersmith & Fulham very soon and they are currently looking for volunteers to drive the delivery vans and assist with co-ordination.

After another weavy pedestrian-avoiding run we arrived back at base. As we completed our cool down stretches we discussed upcoming races and milestones, and of course Christmas! With strectches completed and the temperature dropping, we all headed home to some much needed warmth. Thank you for tonight team, unbe-leaf-able work!

Next week we'll be helping out at Flora Gardens Primary and will be doing some more postering for Food2You. For all the details and to sign up, click here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend. Hopefully see you next week!