Despite miserable weather all day, the rain held off for us this evening and we had a lovely round 10 GoodGymers run 10km to help with a second round of painting at North Primary School!

We started by celebrating the previous weekends running achievements where Chris took on the extremely windy Big Half in 1:31:01 and Harvey completed marathon number 3 of 12 for the year in 3:36:16. Well done, that’s some amazing running! We also welcomed Annie to her first group run in Ealing, previously of GG Barnet Annie is now residing in Ealing and we are delighted to have her!

With a big run of 5km each way ahead of us we did a fast head count and quick fire round of favourite podcasts (Bad Boy Running, Infinite Monkey Cage all getting a shout out!) and we were off!

Better together

Now a 3 mile run in one direction straight down the Uxbridge Road wouldn’t normally be anyones first choice but it’s amazing how much that doesn’t matter when you’re running along and chatting all the way with a great bunch of people! We were all a similar pace this evening with no-one too far spread out meaning there was lots of chatting to different people, just how I like it!

We arrived to meet business manager Imran and our wonderful member Lionel who had arrived at the school earlier on his bike with his trailer of tricks to help with a few extra tasks and helped get the room prepped for us. Lionel deserves a special mention as he goes above and beyond for these hands on tasks, he often brings extra tools and knowledge that means we can get a lot more done than would otherwise allow in the short time we have. We are very lucky to have him!

Brushing up

The task was to continue painting an area of the school that will be turned into a great teachers respite area. It was fantastic to hear that after our last visit the teachers there were inspired to meet after school and do a spot of team painting themselves! Hopefully we can create a joint GoodGym venture with them soon!

21st!

That meant we had a new area to start a first coat on and we kicked things off with a nice 21 mural to celebrate our origins. We were the 21st GoodGym area to open and with the 50th area starting in Solihull next week all the GoodGym areas are creating a image to represent their starting number. We went with simple yet effective!

With not a lot of time of our hands it was a case of getting white paint on as a first coat wherever we could, the guys worked tirelessly for half an hour to give the area a good head start on future coats. Lionel worked to help dismantle some fittings that needed to be removed and when were we all packed up everyone chipped in for the final big piece to take down.

It’s one of those tasks that we could always do with more time on but with Lionel’s amazing extra help and knowing the teachers are now motivated to get stuck in after we’ve been, we left knowing that we’ve made a little difference here!

With a nice tail wind everyone raced back to the start (lots of negative splits from the run out, nice!) and had a quick stretch and debrief!

I’m sure we’ll be back at North again soon but we’ll have a little break from the 10km runs for at least a few weeks, join us next time to see what we’ve got in store!

12 runners joined me last night and were not put off by the big 10km run we had planned to help paint a classroom at North Primary School!

School budgets are often tight, especially with the amount of time they have to dedicate to extra things such as repainting a class room, so we were delighted to be able to come down and offer our GoodGym power!

With a big run ahead of us we started with a quick head count and shot straight off on our long and very easy to navigate run down the Uxbridge Road. As we ran along we noted running long past where some of our other tasks are and lots of us were running further west of Ealing then we ever had before. I do like to treat you on a Tuesday night! It was definitely a case of just keep going as we made our way 3 miles straight down with no turnings to contend with, luckily it was basically impossible to get lost and I'm happy to say we all arrived without incident!

Glossing over it

We were met by Imran at the school who showed us the room we were going to take on, it was currently an interesting shade of yellow and our job was to gloss over it with a fresh coat of white paint! We had lots of brushes and rollers to use between us and we wasted no time is getting stuck in!

• Shan adopted the hack of turning his GoodGym tee inside out to save any paint mishaps
• Annamaria left with a lovely speckled design on her running top, I've heard this is the height of fashion!
• Steph didn't escape the paint and left with a badge of honour on her GoodGym tee, that's what they are for!

I'll get my coat...

After getting one coat on it was clear that the yellow wasn't going to give up that easily and we'll be coming back in two weeks time to give it another coat! We definitely made a fantastic start and the room was looking brighter already when we left. We finished up with Lionel's life hacks, were we cleaned off the paint brushes and wrapped them in damp cloths and cling film to make sure they were good to use next time round! Just a quick group pose and it was a case of 'keep running up that road', all the way back to the start.

Well done everyone, a long run, a painted classroom and a whole lot of good for a Tuesday evening!