19 GoodGym’ers helped clean up two local parks and an inlet on the River Thames as they litter picked a litter pick of this, and a litter pick of that!

Despite the dark evening and chilly air temperature, 18 GoodGymers REFUSED to let this be a reason to stay inside as they joined me to run and do good in Hammersmith and Fulham.

It was lovely to welcome along the ‘fantastic 4’, our 4 fantastic new runners, Analiese, Annabel, Sophie and Georgina for their first GoodGym H&F run - thank you all for coming this evening, hope you enjoyed it! And thank you to our two GoodGym tourists, Danny and Sian for joining us tonight. Give them all a cheer!

You snooze you news...

After a bit of wild-goose chase to find our well-hidden meeting point in the BetterGym, Sian eventually located the sea of red GG tees and Katie 'I'll meet you at the task' arrived bang on time!

With everyone gathered we all headed outside for the intros and a quick round-up of the week’s news:

1. GG Christmas party 🎄🎉 - Friday 6th December. Places are limited so make sure you sign up early! All the details are here.
2. GG Training Run - 13 Bridges Battersea - Tower - Sunday 24th November. All the details are here.
3. Eloise and Matt are running the London Marathon together for Barnardo's & Alice is running the Big Half for FORCE Cancer Charity - sponsorship links are in the WhatsApp group.

Plogging - a rubbish way to get fit or litterally the best?!

For tonight’s task we were going to be 'plogging' - the Swedish word for running and litter picking - in 3 areas for 10 minutes each, so we didn't get too cold! Following a quick name and number count we launched straight into the warm-up to get the blood pumping and temperatures raised.

With the warm-up and dynamic stretches completed, Andrew led us up past Barons Court towards our first plogging spot of the evening, Normand Park. It wasn’t long before we arrived at the park and had set about our mission to clean-up the park. With everyone rubber gloved up and armed with a bag, the group split up into groups of 4 and each focused on a different area of the park, so as to maximise our coverage.

Litter bugs us 🗑️

After 10 minutes there was the equivalent of 2 full bin bags of rubbish that had been collected by all of the teams. Sophie D found everyone's favourite tipple, Lambrini, Katie found a flat football and for Alice helped out by her new beaming headtorch collected an entire bag of fireworks, sweets and other bits of dumped litter. One-wheelie good final find was spotted hidden in the bushes by Lucy, a scooter missing a wheel! With everyone regrouped we once again followed Andrew’s lead down to the second plogging spot of the evening, Lillie Rec Park.

I'll litter you in on a secret, no one likes trashy! 🚯

Once inside Lillie Rec Park the group split into their 4 smaller teams again and headed off in their separate directions looking for more litter. The litter haul from Lille Rec Park was impressive, a bike lock, wheelbarrow, a broken toilet door lock, hockey puck, tissues, sweet wrappers and a bag of a 'special' stash...the less said about this the better! It wasn't a competition, but many were treating it as one (no names mentioned! 😉)

The litter end 🚮

Park clean-up complete we regrouped and set off down and along the river to The Crabtree Wharf, a beautiful inlet on the River Thames where litter-ally all the floating rubbish washes up and accumulates. Tonight, much to our surprise it wasn’t completely filled with litter and other weird and wonderful things - who can forget the plastic seagull and marine radio from the summer?!

Another group may have recently cleaned the inlet but I think we’d all like to think that there was less litter in the River Thames, especially plastics as everyone was being more mindful of their plastic usage and how it should be responsibly recycled or disposed of....🤞

Following a quick group photo we all responsibly disposed of all the big bags, Cookie even managed to part with his beloved bag, "Baggy" which he had lovingly looked after and run with all evening! Plogging completed we began our short run back to base along the river with the stunning backdrop of the lights reflecting from Hammersmith Bridge onto the River Thames. Back at base we had our stretch off before we headed our separate ways, either to the monthly social at Hop Poles or home!

Great work tonight everyone. Thank you for coming along and for all your hard work.

Special shout outs to...📢🙌🏼

• Eloise, Matt and Danny on their Grand Union Canal Half Marathon, apparently a slippy and muddy one! Well done to Matt on his 6 minute PB!!
• Lucy for completing her 200th parkrun
• Thank you to Andrew for leading and to Matt and Lucy for backmarking, and ensuring you got photos that weren't just dark silhouttes...thank you Katie and Lucy for your fabulous Mo'esk photos! "Where are you Mo?"

Next week we're heading on our monthly visit to the Nubian Life Resource Centre to help out at their Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. Sign up here. Have a lovely rest of your week and weekend. See you next week!