14 sunshine drenched GoodGymers ran 7k to One Big Family homeless charity to prepare the food for the evenings homeless food run.

A glorious sunny evening caught many of us out with our running clothing so very handy to have the New Balance sale in full swing and many of the squad to full advantage!!

Heading out on out sight seeing tour of central London taking in Oxford Street, Mayfair, Green Park, Liz's house, Victoria and finally 3.5k later Ebury Youth Club!

Splitting up into groups we had the strong guns collecting water, while the sweet toothers tested their will power by bagging countless pastry's, doughnuts, apple pies, rhubarb pies, muffins and my favourite Cinnamon (don't) share buns.

While the cake slicers got sensory overload as the chopped up the most amazing smelling cakes in manageable pieces.

Great to see this tiny charity doing so well!! When we fist started visiting them there was minimal food and now the donations are huge allowing them to reach a much greater number of Westminsters homeless community!!

35 minutes of bagging action and we had cake mountains on the table tennis table to go with some pre packaged sandwiches and water.

Great team effort and even finishing in enough time to clean up our work stations!

With a job well done we headed off at a quicker pace flying up to Liz's house at a great pace really working at a speedy rhythm!

After a huge royal flyby with any number of dignitaries driving into the palace delaying our progress we decided to feed our legs some speed!! Hammering up the 600m Green Park drag we everyone feeling the satisfaction of the legendary gate touch!

A short jog back to base and stretch out had us done for the evening!

Thank you all for coming along and home to see you again next week when we visit Oasis Community garden to help keep the fruit, vegetables and herbs going. Sign up and come along!

Have a great week

Smooth Running

Joel

30 super charged Westminster GoodGymers smashed 7k of running to One Big Family Homeless charity to prepare the food for the evenings food run and lift shift and stack a tonne of clothing donations!

Amazing weather and an amazing turnout this evening!! Thanks to everyone coming along, great to meet all the GoodGym newbies.

After the briefing we set about the evenings fun dancing through the Mayfair back streets navigating the big group away from as many busy roads as possible!

3.5k Steady running in the early evening sun through glorious central London taking in many of the biggest landmarks took us to Ebury Estate and the One Big Family Homeless charity.

After a bit of slow start we hit our stride getting a formidable sandwich production line going, an efficient bag packing area, Cake Ninjas slicing and dicing and the grafters lifting and shifting a huge amount of clothing donations to make space for a huge Tesco delivery for the new food bank.

30 minutes of frantic action and we had made up 120 food bags with a good selection of food and drink for Westminsters homeless community to fuel on. All the clothing donations had been shifted from the shed to the youth club, over humps, down lifts and Tetris like precision used in the stacking!!

We left as quick as we arrived but this time is 3 waves! All aiming to be the first back to the top of Green Park. David led the first group setting a great target for the next to groups to attack!! Isaac And the speedy crew chased hard to bridge the gap and all three groups arrived together at the top of Green Park after really pushing their own pace! Top work!!

A short trot back, a stretch out and a huge round of applause finished off a great Wednesday evening!!

I lied (by accident) and said we are going St Andrews Youth club next week that is the week after (28th). Next week we are off to the Oasis community garden to help hydrate and care for this community food garden in a unique setting!! Be great to have you along [sign up here] (

Have a great week

Smooth Running

Joel

Meanwhile in Bestminster 12 brave souls headed half a click south by south west to the Salvation Army strong hold in Regents hall on Princess street. Why? To help sort through clothing and help distribute to rough sleepers who were coming in to be grab some food at the soup kitchen before heading off to there accommodation.

We were joined by a few newbies so we gave them the fulllllllllll in depth briefing on the goodness that Is goodgym and why what we do is so important. A few announcements about Christmas drinks, races and missions and we were off.

Obviously we took the long way to get there arriving not long after we left lol, we were welcomed by the lovely staff at SA and given a breakdown of what would happen as well as the dos and do nots.

We split into 2 teams, 1 team downstairs sorting clothes into size order and taking orders from upstairs.

The other team upstairs was classed as FRONT OF HOUSE lol. Meeting and greeting those that came in then asking what clothes they needed. All info was jotted down and everyone downstairs prepared socks, jackets, tees, trousers, sleeping bags, shoes and anything else they needed.

We did this for an hour, made new friends and finally said our goodbyes.

We left, had a gentle warm up then began some cheeky lil sprint relays to finish the session on a high.... thanks for coming ;-)

For this week's run we returned to one of our regulars, the Salvation army in Camberwell.

After a quick warm up outside the Roastery, Helena led the way up Chadwick Road. On the way down Camberwell Grove there was plenty of chat, almost all Great British Bake Off related. Once we arrived at the Salvation Army we were greeted by Janet who told us that there had been a bumper turnout at their recent anniversary celebration, thanks in part to the flyering that we had done on our last visit. This visit was all about the kitchen, the whole place needed a good clean. A low ceiling and Matt's height advantage meant that he was tasked with trying to get rid of the grease and grime from up high while others cleaned shelves, the floor, the hob and any other surface we could reach. While we cleaned we had a serious chat about organ donation before returning to the topic of TV. Most of us had been enjoying the sheer incompetence of the Apprentice candidates but only Beth and Hanna had fallen a little bit in love with Married At First Sight.

Janet has a habit of treating us with sweets when we go to visit but this week had decided we needed something healthy so had some seeds for us to nibble on. After some gentle persuasion she did produce some sweets but she wasn't convinced they had any real sugar in them.

On the way home we Indian filed back up the hill and once back at the Roastery didn't hang about as we were all keen to get home and watch the bake off semi-final.