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!

3 brand new GoodGymers joined 11 old timers last night to help at Ealing Foodbank!

A big welcome to Tom, Rachel and Marline who all joined the ranks of amazing last night by using their evening to run and help in their community for the first time.

With so many new faces we kicked off proceedings by getting the know each other a bit better, we love a 'what's your favourite...' question and this week we went with smoothies. The group are obviously still on a health kick after last weeks legumes discussion! We had everything from peanut butter and almond (ummm....hello!) to spinach which was met with disgust from a few members of the group but each to their own!

We then headed off en route to Ealing Foodbank starting with a few file sprint drills through the park to kick the legs into gear before continuing on the rest of our run where Hillary from the resource was eagerly awaiting our arrival! She had a mix of tasks for us to do including some sorting and cleaning in the warehouse and then a hell of a lot of weeding in the outside area. Instructions were to go to town and get right down to the roots on those nasty weeds!

No time wasting last night as everyone sprung into action across the site to tick off all the jobs!

40 minutes went by and as if by magic (and a huge amount of (wo)man power) the site was looking spick and span which left us enough time for a the run back AND a lovely partner core workout in Wapole Park, it's official GoodGym gets you summer bod ready!

ABSolutlely fabulous!

Such a great run last night, thank you all for coming and I hope we'll see all the new faces again very soon!

On a beautiful sunny evening in Ealing we had 10 do gooders out to help paint at Impact Theatre! IMPACT is a registered charity dedicated to promoting a positive image of disability, developing communication and building self-confidence, through participation in performing and creative arts.

What a brilliant place to go and help!

This week we were joined by new runner Lionel who had recently heard about GoodGym and decided to come down and see what we were all about. We're so glad he did as he really got stuck straight into the task and did brilliantly on the run, it was great to accompany him on the way down to the task and get to know more about his motivations for running, a very big welcome!

Upon arrival at the theatre we were met by Peter who runs the show down there. He gave us a little talk all about what the theatre does and how it all works, he is so passionate about the service and it was great to hear some of the stories of the service users. He also explained how they are funded which I think really helps us understand the good we do when we visit these places and how volunteers can help them keep going.

The task tonight was a spot of painting in one of the hallways, it was looking a little tired and just needed a bit of sprucing up. No problem there, GoodGym to the rescue! Working as a team and very grateful to have a few tall members of the group to reach those high bits we soon covered two full sections of wall with a fresh coat of paint!

Ta-da!

With the run being slightly longer this evening we didn't have time for a fitness session but I think we were all very happy with a lovely evening jogging through Ealing and Pitshanger Park in it's place, next week the run is nice and short so expect a hard fitness session to make up for it when we'll visit St. Mary's Church for do some gardening.

Lastly a huge congratulations to our Ealing regular Harvey who completed Milton Keynes Marathon on Monday and still made it to GoodGym on the Tuesday, what a star! Major Kudos!

It was an action packed GoodGym in Ealing last night filled with running around the beautiful parks of Ealing, planting for Walpole and Sally Squats! This week we decided to make our run a total of 3.71 miles to #finishformatt who sadly passed away running the London Marathon this year.

We started at our usual point at Bodyline Studios who kindly host us every week and welcomed brand new GoodGymer Catherine who really got stuck in throughout the whole night with both the running and the task, big welcome! After a quick discussion about what drink we fancied after the run (1st Tuesday of the month is always our social in Ealing) we were off down to to parks to complete a couple of laps before the task. We took in a big loop of Walpole followed by the mile lap of Lammas and it turned out to be a beautiful evening for it!

Planting Extravaganza!

We soon arrived at our planting spot in Walpole Park and were met by Vanessa who was ready in waiting with plenty of forks and trowels for us to get as much in the ground as we could in the time we had. There was no messing around and we were getting them planted quicker than Vanessa could lay out more ready to go in next, in no time at all we had planted everything she'd got ready for us!

With a little time to spare we headed out for a final through loops of the park to make up our distance and #finishformatt, we used the time to speak about it and how grateful we were to be able to run. 5 minutes to spare back at base meant we had time for little extra and round of Sally Squats it was. By the end of the song we agreed we all hated Sally and her squats and that we would have the tune ringing in our ears for the rest of the night!

Bring Sally up, bring Sally down...

And then to the pub we went! Thank you for coming and hopefully see you all next time!

It was a mild evening in Ealing last night, perfect for a run and spot of gardening at DIG for Cultivate London.

We started with a group introduction welcoming two new runners into the fold with Sinead and Charlotte joining us for their first GoodGym run. Big welcome, you both did a great job!

50 TODAY!

We also had another reason to celebrate tonight with Michael C completing his 50th good deed and earning his black ninja t-shirt! Over the past year Michael has been a regular in Ealing as well as visiting a few other areas and starting his mission running. He always volunteers to back mark as part of the taskforce and is also great a encouraging people to come to parkrun outside of of Tuesday session. We're very happy to have him as part of the Ealing crew and look forward to having him on the next 50 tasks to get his t-shirt with wings!

After a quick sweep on favourite ice-cream flavours (chocolate and banana got a few mentions) we were off and started with a little warm up jog down to the park before working in file formation on some sprint work. Last week we did a test run of this but went a little too fast, this week I think we nailed it!

We arrived at the site and were met by Rosie who had a large pitch for us to de-weed and turn over to get ready for a whole new crop to be planted in. She also had some planting for us to complete in another section of the garden so lots for everyone to get stuck into!

diggity, some doubt...

After initial confusion of 'surely this isn't all weeds, we can't be taking it all out?!' it was confirmed it was and we had permission to go to town on the plot and everyone grabbed a fork and started digging away! Everyone said what a hard workout the job was which is an added bonus on these types of tasks but I think one of the hardest things about last night was getting the full wheelbarrows on weeds into the compost heap, the slope proved tricky to maneuver and required a few of us get it up an over!

I don't think any of us wanted to leave but after half an hour of tough digging it was time time to call it a night, but don't worry it won't go unfinished as we'll back back next week to pick up were we left off!

Last night we had 16 runners embrace the light evenings and join us for a clean up down on the canal on behalf of the Canal & River Trust. This included Danny from Brent who visited us on his GoodGym tourism trail and one brand new GoodGymer Georgia, who despite claiming not be be a runner at all smashed it and kept up right at the front all evening!

We started our run by utilising the parks on the way to the canal in Hanwell and performing some group sprint intervals in file formation through the beautiful Walpole and Lammas parks. After that I found the group were feeling pretty speedy last night but I encouraged everyone to go at their own pace with regular regroups along the way so we didn't loose anyone en route. I think everyone had a great workout on the way down as we were all pretty warm by the time we arrived which with all the recent cold whether felt pretty nice for a change!

We were welcomed by Jack and his van full of tricks and this time he had some more litter picking tasks for us to complete. His pre task check along the stretch we work on had unfortunately confirmed that the loch we spruced up on our last visit had once again been subject to a party or two and needed some serious attention! He also had the infamous bat detector to hand to see if we could find any activity this time round after failing to find anything last year.

Loched and loaded...

Loaded with our equipment we headed for the loch a little further down from our meeting point and with the towpath being a little muddy from all the recent rain we stuck to the path inside the park on the way there, keeping everyones feet relatively dry for now...

Special mention this week to Ronan who joined us back at GoodGym after being injured for a little while! It was great to see him back and as a treat he was on bat patrol while the rest of the group split up to cover as much ground and litter picking opportunities as possible.

The evening proved to be not very fruitful in bat activity although Ronan thinks he heard a few maybes, but what we lacked in bats we more than made up for in litter picking! A huge pile of bags collected between us and this stretch of canal and the loch looks a much nicer place for a spring stroll!

The walk on the towpath back to our starting point proved to be a little muddier so apologies to those wearing shiny new trainers on the run (sorry Jenni!) but everyone did amazingly well so a big thank you for coming out last night!

After the run we all headed to the pub for our monthly social and this week we also celebrated my 50th GoodGym deed with cake and a couple of drinks!

It's been an amazing journey and I can't wait to complete the next 50!

Happy Running!