Yvonne Rinkart

Brrrrrrrrrrilliant to see a new face coming along to tonights run.

Please welcome, cheer and support James who has moved up to the Steel city from Brent.

On a rather chilly eve we headed up to help our good friend Rob the parky from Heeley People's Park to help him with the final layers of wood chip spreading and turning on the children's playground. This task does need doing regularly to keep the playground at it's best and safe for the users of the equipment. It's a huge job for Rob to do on his tod so we chipped and helped with the efforts.

Rob brilliantly laid out the GG red buckets for us and got us straight onto task with some filling barrows and buckets whilst others carried the chip up the hill to the playground where others were spreading and turning. It was a well oiled machine by the end of the task with all components working well together with regular changes to keep people warm and occupied.

After a good session we made a huge dent in the wood chip pile and Rob was very appreciative, as were we of his fantastic Movember mustache (keep it Rob, keep it!).

Once we had left tools tidy for Rob we said ta-ra and headed over to the U-Mix center for some fun fitness. This week we had x4 30s rounds of:

Hanging knee or leg lifts Step up'd or box jumps

Once back we stretched off to relieve our achy muscles whilst others nearby relieved themselves in other ways. Once cooled downed we headed into the Showroom for chats, drinks, food and discovered each others nicknames. Always a dangerous but interesting one...

Until next time, happy running! :)

When you want to feel the burn, there is litter-ally one place to go in Sheffield...

'We love Burngreave'

This was our shout at our group photo on last nights run as we headed out to meet MARVELOUS MALCOM at the 'knotty sculpture' in the Burngreave area.

Malcom gave us a brief brief of the evenings task which was to try and gather as much litter from the surrounding streets as possible before it gets blown down the hill into the river Don and makes it's way to Doncaster!

We got straight to it, working in teams of min 2 with bags and pickers in hand, receiving thanks from local residents as we went on. We even got offered drinks from a local shop!

Once we were done the streets were looking a lot clearer and the local community seemed very thankful and appreciative with even talk of a local Mosque starting their own litter picking group!

The final photo speaks for itself, showing how much impact many hands can make in such a small space of time!

Until next time, happy running :)

WHAT A TASK we had this week!

It had it all;

• Sledgehammers
• Logs
• Lights
• Hills
• Goats
• Cereal!

We met with the lovely Julie of Heeley City Farm (HCF) who let us into this gem of a place and through the site to the field we would be working in past all of the very cute goats.

HCF have had to have some trees on site felled and the larger logs needed splitting, bagging and shifting so that they can be dried and sold in the future to bring some income into the site which doesn't have any monetary support from the Council and needs to be self sustaining so this was a great way for us to help out.

We got straight to it, splitting.... into smaller teams:

• Log splitters - 'I wanna be... your sledgehammer!'
• Assistant log splitters - putting in the 'grenade' splitters into the logs to get them started
• Log sorters
• Log baggers
• Log movers
• Log shakers (ok, made this one up)
• Goat petters

We certainly expended some energy and shed some timber on this task! It was great to be out in the night air, a great remedy to any splitting headaches...At times it was hard to see the wood from the trees, but in the end we were told we had made up 24 bags which was a great effort!

After finishing we made great use of the well lit traffic free hill outside for some hill reps in teams where we did 4 reps of:

40% 60% 80% 110% (as the Americans say)

We had a steady saunter back before stretching off and making birthday plans (see listings on website).

Until next time, happy running! :)

13 runners ran 2km to clear the cycle path for Sustrans

A bundle of GoodGym runners gathered at the Showroom Cinema last night to enjoy the last of the summer sun and do some good for our friends at Sustrans.

An easy 1km down to the Old Durham Ox pub where we met Craig who was ready and waiting with tools galore. The task? To litter pick and clear the cycle path in that area to make it safer and easier to use. Sustrans is a charity GoodGym Sheffield works with a lot, with the mission to make it easier for people to walk and cycle all over the country. More movement and less cars is better for the planet and better for our health so it's a win win!

Three groups set to work litter picking, lopping and digging back. We ended up with 9 bags of rubbish cleared and Craig was delighted with the difference. According to Craig, last time that area was cleared a lot of needles were found but this time there were none. Hopefully, this means that they're now being properly disposed of either by a cleaning crew or by users, so that's progress!

40 minutes later, with the path looking much more inviting, we gathered for a photo and after many attempts trying to use the 'wide selfie' function on my new phone (massive fail) we thanked Craig and headed off to the Park Hill flats...

... for some hill sprints! Team GoodGym had six minutes to complete as many hill sprints as possible, with squat jumps and balancing thrown in for good measure. We headed back under pink skies for a cool down and stretch at the Showroom.

Keen for more GoodGym? There's a group session happening at Parkwood Forest Garden on Saturday morning 09.55 - 12.30. There are only four places left so sign up to see and work in this beautiful space.

Thanks for a great run! Hope to see you soon :)

Keep running happy,

Lucy J