Today, alongside the other awesome City Harvest volunteers, myself and Heidi helped sort two big van loads of surplus food at City Harvest.

In between the deliveries we also did lots of sorting of crates so they stacked nice and neatly ready to use for the next team of volunteers.

It was a beautiful day so the crate sorting was also a good opportunity to catch some sun outside too!

We stacked up the good deeds and the shelves last night as 27 AMAZING runners came out to help at Ealing Food Bank. This included 9 lovely new additions with Sophie, Aurelia, Jane, Vicky, Chris J, Chris B, Gemma, Perrine & Mohand all kicking off the new year in style by beginning their GoodGym journey. Welcome everyone!

You butter believe it!

With everyone full of beans (and in some cases peanut butter) and ready to raise their pulses (literally) we started with a quick warm up and fitness session on Haven Green. We began with some simple drills before turning up the tempo with some running circle drills before seeing how far our legs could curry us to the task.

A lot of the group had bought donations down with them to give on the night but fortuNUTely the many jars of peanut butter we had for offering hadn’t weighed us down too much and we made it to the task ready and raring to go! We were met by the lovely Hillary who after the initial shock of the number of us gave us lots of different tasks to do around the warehouse! With such a large turnout we were crammed in like sardines and soon it was a feeding frenzy of shelf stacking, food sorting and cleaning in every aisle.

The time soon came to make like a banana and split and we headed back to base for a quick stretch and debrief on the nights events.

Hopefully the extra puns littered throughout the report have whet your appetite and given you food for thought for next time when you could have your pun in lights on the report.

A special mention to Michael Kidd this week for leading the run and helping co-orindate the task, also his 99th good deed with GoodGym so next time we get to present him with the BIG 100 T-SHIRT!

As always a massive thank you to everyone who came tonight and hopefully see you all next time!

What a wonderful evening

It started out with a task briefing in the fitness centre. This night we’d be delivering flyers for Wand UK again. Wand is a fantastic charity that provides support for vulnerable and isolated women in the communities. Their services include mental health and wellbeing support, computer and English classes, advice with domestic abuse and parenting. They have also put on an extra project called ‘Holding Hands’ to help those affected by the Grenfell disaster - providing free emotional welling and holistic support, tai chi & yoga classes and massages.

Meet me in Norland Park

After a warm-up we set off together toward Norland Open Space. There, the group was split into two (gender balanced ;) teams. Then armed with maps and new highlighters, they set off to deliver the flyers in different areas - one lead by Polly and the other by Jason.

They navigated successfully and did a speedy job, meaning we could all meet back at the park at 8 for a core workout.

Round the tree Goosey

Our fitness session was a was like a game duck duck goose with a detour. The group did a series of core exercises whilst one member race out to a tree across the park and back. This made the timing different for each exercise. Star jumps, burpees, legs raises and more.

Once everyone had a run out to the tree we wrapped up and headed back home whilst discussing the best local park runs.

Congrats to Esther for making it along to her first Goodgym run. Give her a Cheer!

Next week is our 1st birthday! Join us for celebrations.

This week 16 GoodGym-ers ran 5.5km to help the Barnet Furniture Centre with a flyer drop around Muswell Hill.

We were treated to a guest appearance from GG Barnet oldie Mark this week – give him a cheer!

Lots of hills for us to run up – with even more stairs for us to climb. Damian lead us to a residential part of Muswell Hill while Heather was our trusty back-marker. We split into teams to cover as much ground as possible.

We regrouped under the bridge, where Freya lead us up the stairs to a secret pathway up above London with the most beautiful view. Danica donned her badger face for the photo op before we ran back down to continue the flyering.

My team ran up a giant hill to flyer houses all a million steps away. GG Barnet is building legs of steel. Prima said flyering with the GG crew made running up hills a whole lot better – which everyone agreed with. Running up is always better with company.

The two teams then came together to split up for a final flyer push, before putting the remaining stacks back into our bags and heading towards Cherry Tree Woods for some games and burpees.

After all the running, I figured I'd be nice and let everyone sit down. So we played Duck, duck, goose. After several rounds, we played a game of Bulldog before finishing with the Barnet Burpees. Shawn and Paul were pretty speedy with the burpees and Heather requested we do the worm instead. Turns out none of us can do the worm. Something to work on.

We then ran back to base for this week's Barnet Biscuit: Flapjacks, courtesy of Damian

Well done, team!

Anyone looking to do a Parkrun with Freya this Saturday, sign up to Ally Pally here. More hills, beautiful views at the top.