17 runners attempted to paint a fence for InterAct

Hello! With the advent of decent evening light and a heady 17 degree weather today, we coincidentally had 17 runners! We were making our first visit back to InterAct since January and we were raring to go. After we reenacted our favourite exercise poses from last week (look out for the video come May/June!) we met the new Goodgymer Hannah who sadly missed the opportunity to see Laurie's head move wildly from her body (see photos). We ran the usual route down to InterAct and met the wonderful Susie who outlined the great work the charity does. They do offer Mental Health First Aid courses which are beneficial for both personal and professional development, so please do get in touch with her if they would be of interest to you.

We had several jobs to do - painting the raspberry plant beds green, painting the long fence, painting flower beds, building and installing solar torches and grabbing the old BBQ out of the skip as it wasn't allowed to be there! We jumped into it, with Jenny and Julie heading straight for the cabbage patch, Catherine and Joel went for the flowerbed (while trying to convince Joel that a rectangular BBQ was vastly superior, which it is), James C and James G heard the word 'BBQ' and ran off, Rachel went to build and place the torches, while everyone else grabbed brushes and got stuck in. All the areas which needed the green and brown paint got completed and we made a reasonable start on the fence - but with more to do next week!

Then came everyone's highlight I am sure...EGGS! InterAct had had a donation of 80 Easter Eggs earlier today for the children, staff and any volunteers they have. As we definitely count as the latter and obviously burnt lots of calories with running and painting, we were only too happy to oblige. Thanking Susie profusely, we left but not before posing with our prize eggs. Joseph held his aloft like Rafiki holds Simba in the Lion King, while Emily seemed to have acquired a week's worth of various foodstuffs. We split into two groups for the run on the way back, one to run 2.5k and the other 4k. I led the 2.5k posse with Ellie's boundless energy (welcome to you too!) looping back around us all and stretched to stave off injuries. With the others arriving shortly after, we reminded everyone about unlimited pizza on Friday and parted ways.

I hope you all had a cracking time and have an EGG-cellent Easter! See you next week. Don't eat all your egg at once!

I wasn't sure if it was the first real daylight run, sunshine, half term or the lure of being filmed, but this week a record attendance for GG Chelmsford with 19 runners. Thanks for coming along everyone.

This weeks news was Adam completing his first Half Marathon, very well done.

Welcome to Katherine on her first run and Ally & Henry returning with Emily, Mark and Leanne.

With Joel leading and Rachel tail we headed off to Central Park.

Our task this week was to do a litter pick in Central Park and also being filmed for an Active Essex promotion to get people physically active in the county. The mission statement for this promotion is: "We’re asking everyone in Essex to do 30 minutes of daily physical activity for 30 days throughout June for the 30 30 Essex Challenge. There are no distances to run, no targets to beat and no calories to burn. This is 30 minutes of activity, your way."

Why not get involved, details can be found on this website: https://www.3030essex.com/

After a quick litter pick and being filmed doing this we moved onto the main park area to do a "circuit" session. Four positions were set up with various exercises to be done on each one including amongst many others Burpees, squats, sit-ups, planks and shuttle runs. Superbly organised by Rich with one minute on each post, fantastic effort was put in by everyone especially when the camera was pointing in their direction! Only joking, you all looked good and working hard.

A warm down run around Central Park as a group finished that session.

As we were ahead of time we decided to take a longer route back to ARU through to Admirals Park and the parkrun 'hill'. The rest of the run was through the streets to First Avenue which took us to the back of ARU, there was one last exercise to do in the underpass and it had to be the popular wall squat! We then warmed down at the UNI with a reflection on tonights task.

David will be leading next weeks run to Interact to start painting the fences so sign up now and let David know you are coming along.

Hi All,

What lovely weather it’s been lately, still can’t believe its February. lol

Before I get started, I want to give a warm welcome to Abdalla for joining us on his first group run with us. Hope you enjoyed it and hopefully see you again soon.

As I said, what lovely weather we are having of late and that its perfect running weather only makes it better. We met as usual at the ARU gym and to my surprise Adam was a full 10 minutes early #shockedemoji. After composing myself and realising this wasn’t a dream, we caught up with each other, did a head count and then set off doing our warm ups along the ARU campus. As usual as we stopped at the traffic lights, we did our customary squats while the lights changed

Our task was to do some litter picking along the river bank in the city centre along a route that is well used and collects rubbish. David met us at our starting point with the litter pickers and bags and gloves so we could really get stuck in.

Breaking up into smaller groups we worked our way along both sides of the river with people getting right into the bushes get as much as they could. At one point I thought we might lose Emily (see photo).

We worked our way along until we reached the bridge by the records office where we re grouped tidied away our picking equipment and celebrated a job well done in true Goodgym fashion. With a fartlek…………..

The session was to jog the first bridge then down path until we reached the second bridge, where we walked over. Then on the other side started running at our parkrun pace along the other bank and over the third bridge until almost back to where we started with a sprint finish. The kicker is that you don’t stop but go straight into the second lap. Using the jog and walk to bring your heartrate back down as an “active recovery” before trying to raise it again.

As always WELL DONE EVERYONE , you never disappoint in the energy and effort you bring to the task and the fitness session and I hope that it’s something you can take away and use when you go out for a run.

We caught out breaths and split into 2 groups. One group helped take the rubbish sacks to the bins just off the high street while the other went for a longer run. Meeting back at the ARU gym we stretched off and discussed the upcoming social which we will be going to do the pub quiz at the Golden Fleece on the 14th March.

Hope everyone who came enjoyed the fartlek and who knows, we might do some again in the future lol.

Good luck to Laurie at the Cambridge half marathon this weekend (you’ll smash it)!!!!

See you all soon

Run Happy

Rich

15 runners ran just under 5km to litter pick in Chelmsford

On what began as a lovely Spring evening (until it got dark), we all signed in at ARU. After a run brief and confirmation that we weren't allowed to use explosives inside, we popped outside to congratulate Catherine on her 50th, James on his from last week and Joseph on his 20th! As a treat I had some party poppers I had prepared earlier and BANG off we went with the streamers coming down, special shout-out to Abigail and Anton who had the panache to fire them up so high that even I managed to get them in the photo. We cleaned up our own litter, the first of a lot we picked up, and did a brief warm up. Grabbing the pieces of kit, we set off.

Jogging to our first port of call we split into two and picked litter on differing sides of the river, before meeting in the middle. Laurie had the fullest sack so she won the prize of a photo opportunity. After Andy decided against taking the sleeping bag he found, and Jenny scarpering fast from the conversations about football, we tidied the final pieces of litter we could find as people were clamouring for running and fitness.

It was great to see the competitiveness, particularly between Adam vs Joel (aside from the former's cheating against Joseph) and Emily vs Mark. Good running everyone. Its good to mix up running; hills improve knee lift, joint mobility and strength. With the level of intensity, you might ache a little tomorrow! After Lindsay pointed out the fantastic Super moon (alas no photo), we then cunningly hid the litter pickers for me to collect on my way home (they were all there by the way!) and ran a longer route on the way back. With the option of extended distance up the avenues, four running legends, spearheaded by Max, took up my generous offer and met us back at base. While it wasn't the longest run, we did all put a lot of effort in which is always tough on a February evening. Once we returned to base, Catherine had a magnificent surprise for Joseph, a pack of his favourite biscuits, chocolate bourbons! As a student, Joseph was extra appreciative as it means he won't need to do grocery shopping for another four days.

Thanks for coming everyone, it is always great to see new faces return as it means as run leaders, we are doing something right!

Happy running,

17 runners went to Interact Charity for gardening good deeds

On a somewhat mild February evening, we were happy to greet newcomers Lindsay, Max and Abigail, as well as congratulate James G on completing a brilliant 50 good deeds!

After going through the usual information (in my clearest voice for our new members), we went through a quick warm up and set off for Interact. We noticed two other runners jogging after us on the way, but thought they must be another pair out on a Wednesday. Once we stopped at the lights, it turned out they were joining us. The addition of Mark and Emily made our new members total five for the evening!

We kept our eyes peeled for more recruits along the way, but we were joined by Goodgym regulars David and Fay when we arrived at Interact. Gerry outlined the jobs for us to do, and we then split into two groups. One group did some heavy lifting, moving slabs and bricks, while the other went to landscape a new flower bed. The slab team completed their job so efficiently that they came to help the landscaping team to move the soil. All that hard work meant it was time for our biscuits from the greenhouse, and once satiated we set off back to ARU.

Adam led out, and was in charge of guiding us through Bond Street, almost into Song's, and back on to the High Street. It's good to mix it up with different routes and run leaders every now and then! We resisted the urge to do any squats or star jumps at the Victoria Road lights, and finished with some stretching.

Thank you all for coming to do good, and we hope to see everyone back soon!

Laurie