Before we get into tonight's fun, here is some news:

Tomorrow is the first monthly social of the year. I am sure it will be a right laugh as always so if you are in the neighbourhood, please pop along and represent the Waltham Forest massive. Of course, if you can't make it, next month's date is not to be missed as it will be on our home turf in the illustrious surroundings of Mirth, Marvel and Maud.

You can also represent GoodGym at the Met League XC in Ally Pally this Saturday. It 8kms of hills and mud. Great fun and spikes highly recommended.

The Run

A pleasant 3kms each way admirably led by Ercole out and Ramon back

The Task

It was back to school tonight. The charming Willow Brook primary to be precise. With wet weather forecast Alison, our contact at Willow Brook wisely decided to switch the task to sandpit filling. Our task involved digging, barrowing, dumping and spreading. Magnificent seven proved to be the perfect number for this, and there was enough equipment for everyone to get stuck on, and all the sand was shifted to its new location.

Alma Mater

There was a nice ring to tonight's task as it turned out that back in the day, the legendary Ramon was an old boy at Willow Brook. I am sure his initials are carved into a desk somewhere, but we didn't get a chance to look round that much.

Well done everyone who participated today, I thought you were all magnificent. I loved the fact that as soon as we returned the heavens opened.

Do come along next week as we are back at Leyton Marshes to finish off the plogging we did at the start of the year. I'm hopeful we won't experience the biting cold we did last time but if we do, I will mix it up with some keep warm running drills. Sign-up here, see you there.

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If you watch or listen to the news at the moment, you would be forgiven for thinking that the country is falling apart with all the Brexit shinanigans and division in Westminster. So it is a huge tonic to me to turn off the telly and head out of the door on a Wednesday evening to meet a group of people who build community, do something constructive and who work together to achieve a common goal. Thank goodness for GoodGym.

Anyhoo, before I get on with the deets of tonight's task, here is some news. This Saturday we have a one-off special run taking place to Willow Brook Primary School in Leyton. This is a great opportunity for new runners to get a taste of GoodGym and for regulars to meet up for a lovely Saturday daylight run to a charming school. If you fancy an extended run, Ercole, Ramon and I will be running Walthamstow Parkrun first (5km), then running to Mirth, Marvel and Maud (2.5km), Willow Brook (3km). Anyone is welcome to join at Parkrun or Mirth.

We will be setting off from Mirth at 10.30 am. Please turn up ready to run as Mirth will be closed.

As well as going for a great run and doing something good, participation will boost GGWF's league standings in the January Challenge good deeds target. We are currently in third so with your participation on Saturday, we will end the week on a high.

You can sign up for Saturday's run here

After a rainy day, it was nice to sit in Mirth, Marvel and Maud and see plenty of GoodGymers arriving one after another. We were also delighted to welcome first-timer Sophie to the crew tonight, great to see you, Sophie. I hope this is the first of many. I should also extend a special welcome also to GG founder Ivo who also joined us this evening. All in all thirteen of us set off but after picking up a few chums on the way, we were fifteen altogether shortly after arriving at St Mary’s Church.

Tonight's task was one that is close to the hearts of many of GGWFs regulars as we were filling some planters with compost. Previous tasks had seen us build these very planters and help to establish the compost we were using to fill them.

With such a good turnout, I decided to split the group into a running drills half and a task half, swapping over after some slow, medium and fast circuits had been done. Everyone beavered away at the task and we moved a mountain of earth completely filling the planters before we were treated to a great core workout by Chi, who was visiting us from Haringey for the night. Great work from Chi and even better work from the crew. I suspect there will be a few aching abs today.

Chi is organising a few activities for GoodGym and you can read about them and get involved here:

1. Spartan Race

2. Training Session

Before I go a word on next weeks run. We are visiting St Peter’s In The Forest Church to tidy up the graves. We will also be saying au revoir to Jo Stevens who is soon to be embarking on a trip to India to study yoga. Jo has been an amazing member of the GGWF team, not only joining in plenty of runs but leading some wonderfully relaxing warmdowns post-task. Jo will be missed so come along and say goodbye. This event will also include some of Jo’s delicious banana bread. Sign-up here

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T'was the run before Christmas and all through The Stow several GoodGymers were beavering away in the Mill before doing some hard yards in a tough time trial down Coppermill Lane.

We were a little thin on the ground yesterday, but what we lacked in numbers we made up for in tenacity. It takes a lot to drag one's butt out on a chilly, dark winter night in late December to do some exercise so hats off to the crew. In fact, I think these guys all deserve a name check, we had Louise formerly of the GG's Birmingham Chapter but now living back in East London. Great to see you Louise and I hope this is the first of many. We also had Nerys, back from doing a bit of a David Attenborough in Central Americal. Racing Ruby, who ripped it up in the mile time trial (more on that later). Ercole - Mr Reliable who joined us despite having clocked up a ten-mile run that morning. "Hell-for-Leather-Heather" who landed her time trial on a postage stamp with a perfect run. "Racing-Ruthiran" with an IQ and a V02 max that are off the charts.

Fortunately, the task at hand suited a smaller crowd. We were heading to The Mill, a community jewel on Walthamstow's glittering crown. This place provides such an essential service to so many and you can feel the warm glow of friendliness as soon as you walk in the door. Natasha, our hard working contact was waiting patiently for us to arrive despite the late hour. We have been here many times before so no time was wasted in getting down to it. As part of their big Christmas clean-up, we were helping out with the toy room.

After killing billions of germs, we were back out into the night for our 1-mile handicap time-trial. The results were pretty amazing:

| Name | Predicted | Actual |

 | Heather   | 08:00    | 08:02 |

 | Nerys        | 08:00    | 08:34 |

 | Louise      | 08:00    | 08:07 |

 | Ruby         | 09:00    | 08:45 |

 | Ruthiran  | 06:30    | 06:35 |

 | Ercole       | 07:00    | 06:29 |

It was a display of impressive running with everyone posting excellent times in harsh, dark conditions, and it Nerys's case some serious jetlag.

That's it for 2018. It's been a great year for GGWF. We have some wonderful volunteers and a fabulous team spirit. Thank you to everyone who has joined us and made it so special.

We return on Wednesday 9th January 2019 with a lovely litter pick along the green verges of the Lea Bridge Road near Walthamstow Marshes. Sign-up here

We are also planning a weekend starter run to Willow Brook Primary School. More details to follow but do sign-up here

It just remains for me to say, I hope you all have a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year

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It was great to see another good turnout from Waltham Forest's finest tonight and before I get into the run report, I want to say an extra special hello to our pair of first time GoodGymers, Leoni and Sophie. Great to see you both.

I was very excited about tonight's task, I always like the idea of doing something that has a degree of permanence about it and tonight was one of those tasks. Up at our familiar stomping ground of Walthamstow Village, near St Mary's we commenced work building some large planters to improve the public space in this historic conservations area.

In short, this task involved shifting some large planks of wood about, measuring and marking-up, sawing, drilling, screwing, fixing etc. Basically, this was a good old-fashioned DIY job. Local resident and Parkrun Legend, Penny, met us at the task. Thankfully, Penny had our task all planned out, and we got cracking straight away. We were joined by a collection of other helpful residents as things got going.

With a good turnout and a limited amount of tools, we split the group so that some were on the task while a bunch of us went to do some drills. We then swapped over halfway through, thus maintaining raised heart rates and body warmth as the temperature plummeted.

Everyone involved did great tonight, it was a technical task and we got one full planter made and another well on the road to completion. These bad boys are going to be in situ for many years to come so you never know maybe one day you will bring your grandchildren here and tell them that you built them 👷‍🏗️

We are back here in two weeks to finish off so don't miss out and sign-up today

Also, next week we are back to finish off our bulb planting and a spot of gardening at George Mason Lodge, you can sign-up here

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Delays on the Victoria Line thwarted the plans of some of our runners yesterday so sorry to those of you who couldn't make it. Nevertheless, we still had a great turnout on a wet October evening for what turned out to be a colossal run.

New To The Crew

Before we get into that I want to give a big cheer to plucky new GoodGymmer Heidi and long-term GoodGymmer but Waltham Forest newbie Rebekah. These ladies had a baptism of fire and came out the other end as cool as cucumbers so kudos to you both.

Long

We had a new and important task to complete last night. We were delivering leaflets, but not any old leaflets. These particular leaflets were promoting a free, fabulous, innovative and vital family play staged by the wonderful E17 Puppet Project. The Vote is "an interactive romp through the history of women's fight for the vote..."

The next performance of this entertaining play is due to take place on Saturday at Drapers Field, so we targeted houses in the vicinity. The trouble was it was 4km from our base, so we were looking down the barrel of a long run but this lot eat 4km for breakfast so off we trotted.

Arriving at the destination and with heart rates racing we wasted no time on getting down to it. Streets were divided up, and groups of 4/5 went for it like a postman (or postwoman) near the end of their shift and in need of a bathroom break.

can you believe my spell checker is trying to correct postwoman? Get into the 21st-century Microsoft.

With no less than 500 leaflets dropping through the letterboxes of the good folk of Leyton's front doors the team reconvened and were ready to run back to enjoy the delicious and well-deserved cake baked by the fair hand of, Clara Breakwell, or should that be Bakewell? Either way, Clara is yet another of our multi-talented fitness fanatics.

Winding

Unfortunately, at this point, things went slightly awry when I decided to try out Ramon's route suggestion which turned out somewhat longer than planned. To be fair, it was a much quieter and pedestrian free route, but we did arrive back at base exhausted and a little later than scheduled. Ramon more than redeemed himself in the bar later on by purchasing a huge round of drinks - what a splendid fellow he is.

Anyway, sorry for the error folks but you all acquitted yourselves so well, and you ate up the 11km run and task so well done. I am sure you feel great if a little stiff, today.

So our weary travellers made it home to be led in a wonderful Yoga warm down by the serene Jo

Rocky

We weren't done there. Most of us headed to Mirth to enjoy Ramon's generosity and Clara's amazing Rocky Road cakes. Yum, yum.

That's three week's of cakes peeps and strong rumours of another treat to come next week with the ladies again putting the men to shame with their baking skills.

We are back at an old favourite next week when we head to The Mill. It will be a much shorter run, I promise! So don't delay, sign up today

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