Bunch of Courgette me-nots

24 GoodGym Runners ran through Camden in the rain and tidied up 2 overgrown gardens.

Wednesday GoodGym Camden run was a good 'un. It rained pretty relentlessly...but it was still a good'un.

Here's a report compiled from various quotes and highlights sent in by some of the lovely runners who turned out to help tidy 2 residents overgrown gardens in St Marys Flats in Somers Town.

"I want to go back to my country, it's too rainy here .." Axel M

We all seemed a little apprehensive before the run- possibly due to the rain lashing down outside. After a short indoor warm up, and a run down of my Karaoke repetoire; "my old man's a dustman" (Beth H), and Biggie's Gimme the Loot, we headed down to meet Lee from St Mary's flats.

"Cooor I weren't sure you were coming in this rain" Lee from Somers Town

Well, I wasn't sure either- but skins waterproof, and once you're wet you're wet. Lee asked us if we could help clear 2 overgrown gardens around the main square in the centre of the flats. They were quite small so the main issue was trying to shoe- horn 24 eager weeders into 2 small square gardens.

The larger garden was full of courgettes. Beth M had fun-

"....learning the difference between courgettes and weeds. Made more difficult by rain and darkness-consequently a few more courgettes than ideal are now residing in the compost heap."

We went at it hard- despite the fact that we only had 1 glove each. Pritesh's glove appeared to be fashioned out of pipe cleaners, cardboard and papier-mache ( "I was very pleased to get at least one finger in..." Pritesh M) and after 15mins we could see the soil. Although it looked a little bit like "rubbish mince from a spaghetti bolognese" (Imogen ) the soil looked moist and ready to grow.

"Ax has nothing in his arm" Dan

A few of the stronger member of the team (not you Ax) lugged the big sacks of weeds into the bins, while the rest of the crew readied themselves for a run to Granary Square.

"We did some increasing-tempo 408m reps. And through the rain we went. It felt good. Good Gym.” Peter D

When we got to Granary Square we ran a few laps of the square- trying to slowly and gradually increase the tempo on each lap. Our goals was to try and time a 4 sec improvement for each lap. Here is the route we ran. It was fun- particular for me, getting to watch the runners bust a gut on their 4 laps to strive for that final improvement.

We headed back to the centre, damp, slightly knackered but happy to be have completed our runs in tough circumstance. We not all of us- one person still had some work to do....Will describes his evening in one word;

"puncture"