Last night 17 of us met to run and complete an environmental task at Cultivate London in support or #EarthHour this weekend!

Last night we had lots of regulars, a few returning faces and 2 newbies out to run and do good, big cheer to Louisa and Helen on thier first GoodGym run! We kicked things off with a few warm up drills and a chat about our favourite tracks to hear in the final section of a run or race. Lots of votes for anything loud and fast with a few mentions on Beastie Boys, Queen and the classic... Eye Of The Tiger!

Middle of the road running!

Heading east towards Acton, we planned to meander the back streets avoiding the busy main roads only to find the North Circular was shut. Well it would have been rude not to utilise the usually jam packed road and do some squats and running straight down the middle! We then continued to weave (the ironically busier than the main road) back route, regrouping at every turn until we reached the lovely Rosie and Cultivate London's Acton site!

Sow there was a change of plan...

Our original plan this evening was the build a bug house but as it requires a bit of foraging in nature we decided it's a task better left for later in the year and instead it was all about sowing the seeds of spring! We had a huge selection of seeds to choose from and the plan was to sow a tray of each variety until we ran out of time, everyone got straight down to business working in pairs to get a much done as possible in the time we had. Some of the seeds we more challenging than others as the size demanded a delicate hand and a lot of patience! We labeled everything as we went along Rosie has a list of all the varieties that were sown so that when they start to grow she'll be able to tell us how they are getting along!

Time flew by and it was lovely to see everyone really enjoying the task and chatting away (even if that chat was all about rude pun ideas, Michael I'm looking at you!) and just as we were all starting to get a bit chilly it was time to get warm again with the run back to base.

If you fancy some more #EarthHour action then you're in luck, sign up for our Saturday evening trail and plog (litter picking jog!) here.

15 runners met on an oddly mild January evening to run and help St. Peter's Church spruce up after the busy festive period!

Lots of returning faces and regulars last night but we also had 3 brand new members join us. Welcome Basia, Elena and Dagmara!

Getting into the swing of things!

We kicked things off with a warm up focusing on opening up the hips and getting us ready for some good running form. It's really important to prepare your body for exercise especially in the winter when everything is cold and stiff or if you have a sedentary job and haven't moved a lot during the day. We did lots of leg swing drills, similar to these, as well as lots of high knees to raise our pulses! We also discussed our favourite pre-run food, it turns out lots of us are nuts about well... nut butter! It would appear a lot of the group are partial to a spoonful (or two!) before heading out the door on our runs!

We had a short commute to the church on the cards but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get a good run in, so we planned a route taking in a nice steady hill climb to start us off before arriving at the lovely warm St. Peter’s. We were met by church volunteer Moira who was on hand to show us all the tasks that needed doing.

Giving January blues the brush off!

We all quickly donned tools and got to work around the building, dusting, scrubbing and brushing everything we could! Lots of happy faces and people chatting their way through the jobs on hand showed that January needn’t be blue if you come to GoodGym!

Jenni (who was our lovely backmarker tonight, thank you!) was on hand to help everyone with some good RE refresher knowledge pointing out lots of things around the church and explaining what they were, hopefully useful for Sarb when helping with the kids homework!

Run for the hills!

With lots of us on hand to chip in, the cleaning was done in no time leaving us plenty of time for a great hill based fitness session on our way back. We visited the infamous West Walk for some speedy reps up and recoveries down. Everyone pushed to their own ability and although it’s a tough session I think everyone really enjoyed the challenge and embraced the hills and the training benefit it will have! We finished things off with a one minute wall sit where everyone really felt the burn!

Just a short jog back to base where myself and Chris hashed out the pun, then we finished by stretching out our well worked legs and it was home time!

What a fantastic way to spend a dark January evening!

Don't forget the January Challenge!

Lots of talk at the moment of the January challenge! This is a bit of (friendly!) competition between GoodGym areas to see who can rack up the most good deeds and distance in what is easily the hardest month of the year in terms of motivation to go outside in the dark and cold evenings - this is where GoodGym comes in! This year in Ealing our goal is to reach 140 good deeds between us and to try and run 1450 kilometres as a team. To count just make sure you're on Strava/Runkeeper and connect it up to your GoodGym account, that way all your training miles are counted. Then just come along to as many group runs and missions as you can squeeze in - everything counts towards our target even if you visit a different GoodGym area, if you are registered with Ealing it all counts for us! Read all about it and see our progress here.

Last night 10 runners favoured a night of doing good over watching the football and ran 7km to help The William Hobbayne Charity down by the canal!

Joined by some lovely GoodGym regulars and Andy visiting us from Hounslow we set off on our run through the parks and back streets of Ealing down towards the canal. We did a few (unnecessary given the glorious weather) warm up drills through Walpole before continuing with a nice relaxed run to meet June and her team ready to work on the area by the canal the charity manages.

Our instructions were simple, flatten and cut back as much of the overgrowth and weeds around the planted saplings as possible. We were armed with a treasure trove (wheelbarrow) full of different tools including a couple of scythes which a few of us were very keen to have a go with!

GoodGym 1- Nettles 2

With tree-mendous team work we cleared a big area and the saplings could be seen in their full glory! The only thing that got the one up on us last night was the nettles but for a hardy bunch like us we could hack it and we were all rewarded with some delicious watermelon for our efforts!

We all pitched in and smashed our goal!

A warm night and England playing last night meant I was concerned about how many we tempt out but I needn't of worried as we still had a super strong team out in force and got so much done! Much like the aforementioned game we did go slightly into extra time but it was worth it for the reward of a pint and cake in the pub for our monthly social (and to celebrate my birthday, thank you for the lovely card everyone!)

Special mention this week to Jenni who was on GoodGym day 3 of 4, a mission on Sunday, Richmond on Monday and she'll be heading down to Hounslow tonight. The plan is for her to reach her 50th good deed on Tuesday 7th August which will also be her birthday! Get it in your diary now and ask her about all the other areas she's visiting and see if you can join in!

Hopefully see you all next time!

Last night saw 20 runners come out on a lovely sunny evening in Ealing to do some digging and planting down at the Mencap DIG site for Cultivate London.

Firstly a huge warm welcome to Charlie who joined us for the first time last night and also a big shout out for tourist Danny who has done a ridiculous amount of good since he joined in February this year! We also had lots of returning faces this evening which was lovely to see!

On a little side note I'm going to come clean straight away as really we only had 19 runners last night, I may have sought other means of arriving at the task due to being a bit under the weather... but the most important thing is that we got the task done last night and all arrived there and back safely!

After a quick warm up I set the group off on their 3km journey through the streets of Ealing. Following them on wheels to make sure no-one got lost, everyone arrived at DIG ready to get stuck in! Rosie from Cultivate was in waiting and had a big old patch of land covered in grass for us to dig up so that we could start the process of planting some corn!

The great thing about this site is that there are plenty of tools and space for big groups to work so it meant everyone could get involved and we could clear a lot in a short amount of time!

20's a plenty!

Talk soon turned to puns and we had lots of them flying around this evening (I've got all the others in my back pocket for future tasks!) but this weeks winner came courtesy of Sam!

Time went so fast last night and I'm sure we could get carried on all night but we'll be back soon to help some more! After a quick clear up the group set off on the return run and I met them back at base for some stretches before lots of us headed to the pub for our 1st Tuesday of the Month Social. We also made a good start on our GoodGym Olympics Flag which we'll keep under wraps until the big unveil at the event.

Hopefully see you all next time when we'll take on the Ealing mile and trim at The Transition Garden in Lammas Park, hopefully sans cold on my part!