Team Nicky Spinks winners of January Challenge 2021

January 2021 hasn’t been an easy month, from the cold weather to the third Covid-19 lockdown, it’s been non-stop. Many of us were left at the end of 2020 with the feeling of “now what?”

We knew that community missions would be harder to do and group runs still can’t happen but we wanted to do something to continue encouraging the GoodGym community to keep running, walking and cycling and overcome the daily challenge of keeping ourselves sane, motivated and connected.

_{^{GoodGym Haringey were adding km and good deeds to their Janaury Challenge tally until right at the end. This was yesterday as seven runners ran to help the Westbury Banks Nature Reserve**}}

The league table results across all eight teams has been impressive. Every area had people either running, walking or cycling and that is what we wanted to see.

Amazingly, 911 people participated in this year's January Challenge accumulating a collaborative 69,692 km of running, 32,212 km of cycling and 31,642 km of walking. This is impressive distance.

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The winning team has demonstrated amazing stamina, collectively they completed 20074 km.

11065 km running, 4458 km cycling and 7896 km walking.

The winner of the sought after golden trowel this year is Team Nicky Spinks- Well done to Barnsley, Bexley, Brent, Leicester, Liverpool, Solihull, Trafford and York.

_{^{GoodGym York completed a whopping 11459 Km, here’s a report showing the range of different ways (including cakes) they kept motivated.}}

Why the team names?

Starting the year with lockdown prompted us to look deeper into the sporting world and find out which athletes overcame their own challenges to become leaders in their discipline.

• Nicky Spinks - British Fell Runner

• Kadeena Cox - British Afro- Caribbean Parasport Athlete

• Fauja Singh - British Sikh Centenarian Marathon Runner

• Noel Thatcher - British Paralympic Runner

• Yuki Kawauchi - Japanese Citizen Marathon Runner

• Tanni Grey- Thompson - Welsh Paralympic Athlete Wheelchair Racer

• Ayesha McGowan- First African-American Women's Professional Road Cyclist

• Jasmin Paris - British Ultra Runner

We used the people above as our inspiration to group areas into teams named after these athletes and tackle this year's challenge from a different perspective, focusing on being connected and inspired to go further, despite having to stay local.

And here is Portsmouth, setting the example by keeping runners motivated with photo challenges

And in Bexley, runners (and their dogs) chased down street signs challenged to spell the word Lockdown from 8 different streets in letter order.

Despite all odds, this year's Janaury Challenge has been a success.

A massive thank you to all the area activators, Task Force and Run Leaders for keeping the January Challenge momentum going in your areas and to all of you for being so creative and safe with the virtual challenges.

Well done to everyone who has contributed whether it was a few kilometers or a hundred.

We look forward to the challenges of the year ahead knowing we can be inspired to push through them and go further, together.