0 Month Streak
Mon 9th Oct 2017 at 6:30pm
Wandsworth Report written by Alyx Murray-Jackman
Last night in Wandsworth we started the week right with a short and speedy run, an equally short and speedy task, plus a fun fitness session.
Stephanie, William, Alice and Lynn all joined us for their very first GoodGym group run last night with some fantastic running, so give them all a cheer!
We had some great news last night, with a couple of Wandsworth runners smashing the Oxford Half Marathon on Sunday and still making it to the group run - Tom and Matt, well done!
The run was short-ish so we made sure we took our time warming up to run in the cool night air, and heard about all the ways in which everyone takes care of their own mental wellbeing - of course GoodGym and running took the top spots, with wine and baths also scoring highly. Running and exercise are great ways to de-stress and your body will get a rush of endorphins, ensuring you feel good! One runner wrote an article about it all here.
We took a speedy 2.5km run down to Alderbrook Primary School, with David backmarking, to move some furniture from the top of the school down to the bottom. After a quick photo we were shown to the room where all the furniture was stored - it was about 4 flights of stairway up to the top of the school, so we knew we were in for a good leg and arm workout. Everyone got stuck straight in and split up into groups to carry chairs, tables and shelves all the way down to the playground where everything got stored in a small out-building. With so many hands helping out it was all over quickly and we were ready for our run back to BAC.
We stopped on the common for a longer fitness session where we found out who is scared of spiders and who cycles to work amid all the planking, sumo squats and reverse crunches. As we finished the task so quickly we even had time for some quick games of fish and chips and duck duck goose!
Thanks for having me to lead the run Wandsworth. Ana will be back in her rightful place next week when we visit Wendelsworth Community Garden to see our GG Tree.
Tue 10th Oct 2017 at 9:44am
Great job Alyx- you nailed it!
Tue 10th Oct 2017 at 9:47am
Brilliant run, session and report Alyx!
Mon 4th Sep 2017 at 6:30pm
Sheffield Report written by Tom Mutton
Seventeen Sensational @GGSheff runners ran to Sharrow Community Forum to help sand and assemble chairs for a wood CNC workshop!
After welcoming @HelpSheffield Phil Vintin to the team we headed off to SCF. On arrival and after boosting our team numbers by two we headed into the workshop to meet Marvelous Marie.
Marverlous Marie gave us all a fantastic brief explaining the plans for the workshop and how @GGSheff have helped to get it to it's working state it's in now.
We got straight to it with 2 grades of sandpaper to ensure a quality finish on the edges before gluing and bashing the pieces into place.
We even had a chance to try out the shop made balance boards with some impressive results.
After a quick drink to quench our thirst we headed to a near by playground and got straight to business with some:
We then finished with a straight arm hang where Magic Mike & Tenacious Tim impressed all with their gorilla grip!
Until next time, happy running!
Tom :)
Mon 5th Jun 2017 at 6:30pm
Wandsworth Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
What a great bunch of runners we had in Wandsworth last night. Not only did we have some lovely GG tourism from marathon man Graham and Tom, but we welcomed along Jake to the group. Give them a cheer, good people.
Well done to superstar Sophie who stormed round the running leg of the Blenheim Palace tri, and to Sally, who smashed her first ever Park Run at the weekend. More cheers, please.
This was our last run before the GoodGym Olympics on Saturday, and our final chance to fine tune our split times and track strategy. We had a quick chat about our flag - we're meeting tonight at the Work and Play Scrapstore at 6:45 before decamping to a pub nearby to create our masterpiece if you'd like to join us.
After a few damp dynamic stretches, thanks to the great British summer, we debated everybody's favorite sportsperson. Only one Mo Farah, but several Johnny Wilkinsons?! Tonight's task was at The Venue, a community space which hosts events to bring together local people, run by the lovely Hadas. It was a fairly short run there, but long enough to get us soaked. We dripped in, and divided up into teams to tackle a deep clean of the whole place. We sponged windows, scoured the kitchen, scrubbed the toilets, cleaned the outside area, washed the carpet, and gave the whole place the GG treatment. For which we were rewarded with watermelon, the perfect post-run snack.
Task done, we took ourselves outside to do a round of circuits which, after some very sketchy maths, featured burpee high fives, planks, back-to-back squats, sumo squats, sprints, high knee skipping, press ups, tricep dips and mountain climbers. It was a tough one but there was some high energy circuiting from Team Wandsworth. Well done everyone.
All that was left was to tackle that last pesky hill on the way home, and to stretch it out before having a drink or two at the bar to celebrate Jack's birthday. Talking of drinks, the monthly social for the whole of GoodGym will take place after the Olympics, at The Grafton at 6pm. See you there! In the meantime, why not sign up for next week's run here - we're going to be stuffing envelopes for the RSPCA!
Tuesday 16th May 2017
Abbie Jackman has done their first good deed with GoodGym.
Abbie is a now a fully fledged GoodGym runner. They've just run to do good for the first time. They are out there making amazing things happen and getting fit at the same time.
Tue 16th May 2017 at 12:07pm
Way to go Abbie! Great to meet you
Mon 15th May 2017 at 6:30pm
Wandsworth Report written by Anastasia Hancock (she/her)
Yesterday a team of excellent Wandsworth runners made it all the way through Monday, and celebrated by meeting up to go on a lovely run together. It must have been some kind of record last night, with a bonus number of gorgeous new faces. Let’s give a huge GoodGym welcome to Clare, Hannah, Jasmine, James, Abbie, Kate and Helen.
Well done to Matthew and to Jasmine who both crushed Park Runs in Fulham Palace and Exeter respectively, and a big good luck to [David] who is running the Edinburgh marathon in a couple of weeks. We were thinking of our Wandsworth-on-Tour runners who were away in Riga smashing the 10k and half marathon races there, way to go team flying squirrels! Hat tip to Jo who is topping the distance tables and to Alyx and David, who are making their borough better by doing the most good deeds. Lovely bit of business.
Don’t forget we have a Wandsworth Whatsapp group which everybody is welcome to join – just let me know – a Facebook and Twitter page, and a Spotify account which we usually listen to on our runs, except that somebody forgot to switch it on last night (me). There is also a mission this Saturday in Tooting, for which you don’t have to have had your documents checked. It’s for our lovely friends at the Work and Play Scrapstore, and it starts at 9:30 so you could even fit in a Tooting Park Run beforehand! Check it out.
With our welcome done and dusted we took ourselves outside for a spot of warming up. We did a quick head count, and to get to know each other a bit better we drilled down right to the important stuff – our favourite type of crisp. The results were eclectic, to say the least, and there was no outright favourite – but Thai sweet chilli Sensations and Salt n Vinegar were named more than once, with guacamole and salsa getting honourable mentions as crisp companions. There were a few left fielders which set our bellies rumbling, including Space Invaders, Discos, Squares and Monster Munch. No Frazzles, Skips or Salt N Shake though. Interesting.
With this crucial poll taken, we set off to do some good things for our community. Tonight we were going to Eden Community Garden, a beautiful outdoor space for everybody to enjoy that we have helped at before. Eden’s objective is to provide a ‘green, tranquil, inner city space; a pleasant place for all to sit, play or garden. Its aim is to create and maintain a sustainable habitat for wildlife and promote bio-diversity by planting British native species and through organic gardening’, which we are right on board with. We were treated to a light shower (ahem) of rain on the way, which only sped up the pace, and arrived damply at the gorgeous garden to be greeted by Benny, the head gardener, Philippa, who runs the project, and the churchyard cat, who we named Jim (or Gym).
There were plenty of jobs to be getting on with, including moving a big pile of wood to the churchyard for a bonfire, weeding the ancient graveyard (which was full of the final resting places of Roundhead soldiers killed in the Civil War battle for Battersea Marshes), forking beds (sorry David and Daniel, I didn’t really get to grips with what you were doing, but it looked like hard work), clearing areas, and turning over compost. Team Compost did not find anything too alive in their bins, although Philippa did tell us that one year when they had a bumper load of snails that they cooked them and ate them with garlic and butter. True story.
With the jobs done, we said goodbye to Eden Community Garden (we’ll be back soon!) and shot off to the common to do our fitness session. We got our blood pumping with a quick game of Clusters, and then hit the hard stuff. Intervals! Everybody’s favourite. We alternated a minute of hard running with a recovery, making sure that we really made a change in pace. This kind of training is hard work, but brilliant for you, and as well as improving speed and strength, is great for developing aerobic capacity and burning fat. Great work. It was a short jog for recovery back to the BAC, where we cooled down with a few stretches, and as usual, rounded off the evening nicely with a medicinal drink or two. Same again next week? Yes please! You can sign up here.
Ps don’t forget to get me your elements for the Wandsworth flag!