Huge appreciations to the amazing Goodgym crew who come down to help at the Saucony London 10km, one of the premier closed road inner city running events in the athletics calender. Goodgym assisted the team from Motiv Sports with coordinating this incredible event, helping with course marshalling, road crossings and sweep cycling on the day. Congratulations, and Thank You for your help!

First Half - With England in the final it seemed a football reference in the title was appropriate. There was no time to discuss the match as for the first little while there was just the two of us, AJ and Linda, picking and packing at Frenford Foodbank. Whilst we know others will join us as they finish work there is always a niggling "what if it ends up just the two of us" thought as we move about in the eerie quiet of a usually bustling sports centre.

Half Time - A client turned up a little early and their parcel wasn't ready so we scurried about putting that together just as our new member Mira arrived. I hope he realised how welcomed he was as we invited him to throw his stuff on the floor and get stuck in with our rush job. Happy to say there was a little time for the niceties, introductions and brief training later. Mira soon had the hang of it and made a very useful contribution to the session sending a massive welcome to the group Mira.

2nd Half - Herman and Tina arrived straight from work and got started, Herman pointed out that there was a message from James asking if we still needed help so a speedy "get your bum over here" reply was sent. We ended up with 6 Goodgymmers and some Frenford staff, commandeered from their usual jobs by the task owner, so everything got done in good time and there was also a little time at the end of session to do a little shelf filling and the obligatory photo session - AJ had left due to family obligations before then so I have used a cute one from a previous session 😊

Game Over We Won 🥳🥳

We arrived at Frenford Foodbank to find two trolley loads of donations and a supermarket delivery. AJ started by sorting out shelves, moving anything incorrectly placed and tidying up, Ed and Peter sorted out the donations and Linda moved some stock that the Task owner had previously requested to be shifted.

Pretty soon those jobs were done and we all moved on to off loading the supermarket delivery. We had all done this job before and were finished in double quick time, including tidying up after ourselves. All ready for Thursdays picking and packing. Nicely done people 😁

On a very soggy Saturday 9 of us signed up to join Valentines Parkrun Volunteers.

Our Peter who has been with GGR since its first session was first to arrive and was on his post good and early with a very bent umbrella, regular volunteer (now a legend at Valentines parkrun) Ed was next along with the Mrs, shortly joined by Jenny, James and AJ. As the first timers talk started we splashed off to our respective posts.

198 runners went by in surpisingly good spirits considering the drenching they got. A lone GG Tshirt was spotted among the runners which we can only assume was Harvey-sorry we didnt get to meet you properly.

Not sure where Julia was posted but she popped up just before the end and set of to bag a table in the cafe. We were supposed to have a picnic outside but the weather had other ideas. Parkrun done Sharon (also celebrating a significant birthday this month) scurried off to fetch her home made goodies while we made our way over to the cafe.

Not sure if the cafe turned a blind eye to us brining our own food or too busy to care but we got away with it. We had a lovley selection of nibbles and of course Colin 🐛 making his usual appearance. With half the table discussing politics and football the other side more into food and other topics, a good time was had by all.

Despite no Area Activator and Central Office being unable to support us in helping to find tasks Redbridge GG still has some active members keeping calm and carrying on. Lets hope we can find a way to get more members active in the borough so we get to celebrate more birthdays.