One goodgymer volunteered with our good friends in Abundance to pick apples that would otherwise go to waste.

We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are used for processing (chutneys etc) from the “third” which are given to local pigs. We saved 20kg of first and 20kg of seconds!

Rachel and Yvette both got on their bikes to join the Abundance project on an unseasonal sunny afternoon in Sheffield. 🌞

We were admitted to the largest, most beautifully manicured private garden I've ever seen to help harvest an apple tree. Unfortunately virtually all had fallen since it was initially visited last week, so they were mostly a little bruised or damaged on the ground. The insects were loving it, some beautiful butterflies in particular! 🦋

We sorted the still edible from the past it. The inedible were taken to the compost heap and the usable will be distributed to food waste charities to be cooked up into pies and crumbles. Before we left, we weighed our haul with the snazzy new scale and chatted about hopefully setting up a Monday night group run. In total we got about 32kg of seconds to go to good causes! 🍏⚖️🍎

After welcoming new GG runners Hayley and Kate - please give them a cheer :) on this very moist evening in Sheffield 22 hard core GG runners pipped it 1.4 miles from the Showroom to meet Lucy from Abundance to pick apples from one resident's apple trees. Fighting food waste, many cooking and eating apples were collected, picked and sorted into firsts and seconds to be shared by Abundance with the local community. Wet, Wet Wet rewrite: "I feel it in my fingers... I feel it in my toes... Rain is all around us, and so the coldness grows" The GG good apple team pressed on back at a speedy pace to get dry and warm back at the Showroom. Thanks everyone :)

Thanks to everyone who came along to Regather to help us celebrate our second birthday.

In those 2 years, 435 runners have taken part in activities in Sheffield, completing 3,005 good deeds, including 72 missions, 123 group runs and 262 coach visits. In that time the group has also covered 48,591 kms! That's more than the circumference of the globe! We've cheered 14,595 times and been cheered by others 20,891 times.

If you ever want to have a look at what this group has accomplished just follow this link.

Thank you to all you guys, not just for coming tonight, but, you know, actually being GoodGym.

Hopefully our third year will be even busier, with even more people involved.

Special thanks to Kim for organising everything in advance and to Suze and Sarah for decorating the venue ahead of time and sorting the amazing cake!

If anyone has any more photos of the evening they would like to share, please get in touch with Steve and he'll get them uploaded.

WOW, just WOW!

On our 2nd birthday we had an amazing, incredible, unbelievable 41 runners rock up for the evenings task!

This week we had a slightly longer and hillier run to help Lucy from Abundance with their fantastic work of helping to collect apples that would otherwise go to waste in the city.

After a long hard slog up Cemetery road we met with Lucy who took us to a particularly big tree that was ripe for the picking.

We got a very thorough brief from Lucy re the process for the eve which involved;

• Collecting the 'windfall' apples from the floor
• Passing onto the sorting team who graded, sorted and weighed the apples
• Picking some of the reachables
• Doing a mass shake of the tree with a huge tarp underneath to grab as many as poss - what a sight!

The grand total was 128.5kg!

30kg were 1sts (fruit in good condition) of which 20kg went to the tree owner and 10kg was shared with Roshni Asian Community Centre and Learn For Life English Teaching Centre (both in the Highfield area of Sheff). The rest of the apples were shared with all volunteers, went towards their community juicing event at Feast In The Forest Fair and will be used for future chutney/juicing sessions and cooked at the Harvest Festival with New Roots, held at New Roots. Sat 3rd Nov.

Big congrats to Caroline for hitting 100 deeds and running with her wings and looking angelic.

Once all done we headed back to our friends at Regather for Birthday celebrations which included a lot of laughs, beers, great food and a massive cake! HUGE thanks to Kim and Steve for all their help bringing the party together!

Until next time, happy running :)

32 Good Gym runners ran 5k to pick apples for Abundance.

Before we headed off we gave a warm welcome to Francesca and Jen who were joining us for the first time and a round of applause to Tom 2 who was doing his 50th Good Deed – great achievement Tom.

The arrival of autumn was marked by the increasing amount of head torches and hi-vis gear as well as a noticeable chill in the air.

However, we soon warmed up under the guidance of run leader Kim, whose whistle kept piercing the Sheffield night as she gave us different exercises to do on the run to the mission. These included a raised leg walk which hadn’t been seen since John Cleese did it in Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks (Google it youngsters).

We were met by Lucy and Peter who gave us our task and told us a bit about Abundance. It is a volunteer based organisation that rescues, shares, cooks and processes fruit which may otherwise go to waste from across Sheffield. The fruit is then shared with the local community. You can find out more about Abundance at www.sheffieldabundance.wordpress.com

And if you’d like to become a volunteer by scouting, harvesting, sorting, processing or distributing fruit you can email them at abundance@growsheffield.com

There were so many of us that Kim had us split into two groups: one apple picking, the other sprinting up the road and doing even more exercises – and then swapping over.

The task concluded with a brave group of runners holding a large tarpaulin under the tree whilst Mike shook it as vigorously as he could. The result was impressive - like a firework display of apples falling to the ground. One or two runners were hit on the head, thereby reaffirming Isaac Newton’s apple inspired law of gravity.

A steady run back downhill to the Showroom, a quick stretch and a beer or two rounded off another great Sheffield GG evening.

Oh, and for those of you who were expecting lots of apple puns in this run report, sorry – other than the title there are none. Having used every apple pun I could think of in Saturday’s Apple Picking for Regather report I had no new ones left – and simply repeating them would have made a tarpaulin run report …