Baby, it's cold outside!

I can't believe there are so few runs left between now and the end of the year. We have a few.. ahem.. crackers lined up, and we started that line up tonight with our final visit of the year to Newcastle Eagles Community Arena. We have been visiting the arena every month to lend a hand to tidy and keep on top of the gardens at the front of the arena car park. We always like this one as it's a short run, has a great area for fitness session and it's always super well-organised (thanks, Neil!).

We started the night with a big shout out for Aimee who reached the glorious landmark of 100 GoodGym Good Deeds at the weekend. She couldn't make it to the group run tonight, so the great golden wings of goodness will have to wait until next week! It was great to welcome Martin along for his first ever Group Run too, you will see how stuck in he got with the task too, very impressive for a first timer.. you can come back, Martin!

Task Force awesome Andrew also got a shout out for an impressive 12 month mission streak. Bravo, sir.

There were three Community Missions over the weekend, with a double header for Newcastle Parks that included a sloth cake, and a solo visit to Nunsmoor Park for Ross who I awarded Pun of the Weekend to. The reports for the missions are in the Run Reports section here

A number of cancelled parkruns in the area over the weekend due to ice meant there wasn't a lot of weekend running to catch up on. The group didn't really need to hear my extended story version of my PB (or was it) at Oulton Park Half yesterday, as I am so unable to walk it kind of spoke for itself. I got a nice sympathetic clap anyway, then left the group in the hands of Katy for the warm up while I hobbled up to the task with Miranda.

Hi-vis on, wheelbarrow and tools collected and it was straight on with the job. Neil had given us two areas for weeding that will be finished off by a group who attend regularly from the Scouts and Cubs too. There was some impressive and aggressive weed pulling, including a massive win by Rachael and Debbie- check out their proud photo! We were able to make a massive difference (shout out to Nick for much wheelbarrow-ing tonight!) in just 25 minutes and Neil thanked us for the brilliant effort we always put in. We will be returning to continue the jobs in January.

After a few epic group photos it was on with the fitness session, which was a team-effort sprint relay. The energy was top-class and there was some super fast running on display. It ended up being a draw which despite the cold on the Scotswood Road, gave me a lovely warm snuggly feeling. Top work, everyone.

There are two chances to get an extra good deed in this week but be warned, both of them are super-Christmassy! The first is a big present wrapping mission on Wednesday night and the second is on Sunday at Nunsmoor Winter Festival so pop along if you can. I'll see you next week for our return to Recyke Y' Bike! Sign up for that here Have a great week knowing you started it doing good things.

Anji x

Our monthly visits to Elliott House come round so fast, and we were back there tonight!

Elliott House is a home to vulnerable men in our city, and it's a project we help out at regularly in support of our charity partner Changing Lives who do great work in Newcastle and the wider community in the North East. We have been helping to give their massive back garden a big makeover. The weeks are flying by and we started the countdown to our final run of the year tonight with a decent turn out in horrible conditions. I was so impressed to have not one but two new runners along on such a rainy miserable night. Well done Rebecca and Verity, we salute you.

You can do this, you can do anything!

We had a very quick Letters Game warm up to give Charlotte and Katy who were walking tonight a decent head start as they headed off up the famous hill of Westgate Road. Charlotte was wearing her brilliant 100 tshirt for the first time tonight, but you will have to take my word for that because it was far too cold and wet for her to take her coat off when we got there!

Brilliant task owner Alice met us with good news and bad. The bad news was we were still going to be outside for the task despite the rain, but the good news was that there were white chocolate muffins for everyone who wanted them at the end.. and they were MASSIVE. We were keen to get cracking and keep moving tonight, so it was straight on with weeding and clearing with conversations ranging from matching underwear to the best leggings for doing squats. It was brilliant to see everyone getting stuck in and as always we made a huge difference in just 25 minutes of our handy work.

What we really need for tasks like this is a GoodGym Goat. It could come to tasks on a Monday, munch through the leaves and weeds we clear, then we could take turns to look after it during the week - Debbie

Muffins collected and definitely not dropped by Katy, and we were off back into the city and on the way to our fitness session. It was so impressive to see everyone joining in on a paired activity of hills and recovery jogging, complete with high fives, heaps of encouragement and cheers from random passers-by. The effort was tremendous. We finished off with some personalised stretches for Evan's dodgy Achilles, Louise's back and Abi's .. um .. glute area. A Monday night very well spent!

We have had to make a very last minute change to the mission which was due to take place on Friday, and now has to happen TOMORROW! Please, please get involved tomorrow afternoon if you can as we deliver leaflets for Gosforth Civic Theatre from 1pm. There are a bunch of other Community Missions coming up in the next week from gardening to present wrapping so check them out and pop along if you can. All the info is here

See you next week when we are back at Newcastle Eagles for more gardening and good things.

Anji x