31 GoodGymers ran between 5-8km to help Camden Society paint and C4WS make beds

Hey, hello, whatup - that was fun wasn't it! Brilliant night of great people, fun fitness and GOOD tasking. Welcome to newbies - Matt, Amy, Emily, Zahava and Imogen who joined us for the first time last night - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. There is a GoodGym Monthly Social next Thursday at the Square Pig in Holborn, come along it will be full of puns, fun and Pritesh...
2. Well done Beth Hoskins (who started at GG Camden and is basically one of ours) who was the first person ever to reach 500 Good Deeds in GoodGym, she was sent a letter by the Prime Minister and Huffington Post wrote a cool article about her

After an active warm up in the cold January air we split into our teams and got 'gooding'. Chris took a team of 10 to help C4WS at the American International Church make beds for the homeless, over January and March each year we send a team of 10 people weekly to help the shelter with this task - saving them lots of time and effort.

Camden Legend Sophie Hedges wrote a cool haiku about the task:

American Church

Bed for the night, basic right

Fold corners with care

We are going to have a different member each week do a haiku about the bed making - it's an incredibly important task but it's hard to write 10 normal reports on it. Chris' team made quick work of the beds and then ran up to Kentish Town to join us for a last minute cleaning job - smashing 8km overall!

Camden Society Report by PB:

A team of 20 ran to Kentish Town to go help Camden Society, it was 2.5km up there and everyone kept a good pace to our NEW TASK. The Camden Society runs services across London and Oxfordshire. With a reputation for creativity, innovation and enterprise they generate new opportunities for people with disabilities to achieve greater equality. All their services are person-centred, supporting people to develop their lives in whatever ways they choose.

This fantastic charity have 10 sites across London, including 8 cafes, their Head Office and a site which sends out our GoodGym t-shirts! These are all run and serviced by people with learning difficulties - amazing!

Steve is actually an artist

Our tasks for the evening were as follows:

• John and Laurence cleaned the shop windows; front, back and around
• A team of 5 cleaned and scrubbed the walls, doors and services on the downstairs kitchen
• A team of 4 sanded and painted the hallway
• A team of 3 sanded and painted and disabled toilet

Amazing work all! We stayed for 45 minutes and got tons done. Now joined by Team Chris we ate some flapjacks, took a group pic and headed home for a stretch.

Sign up here for next week, three tasks - Abbey, St Mary's & C4WS!

PB out

31 GoodGymers made 12 beds for the homeless and did Char's brilliant fitness session

Welcome to Lucy whose first time it was last night, also lovely to have Tim and Nick from GG York along for the evening and of course thank you to Char (New Liverpool Trainer) who was getting a taste of GG Camden last night!

Last night was the beginning of a 10 week slot where we make the beds for C4WS at the American International Church, I believe this is some of biggest amount of GOOD we do for Camden all year. We are essentially making beds for people to sleep in that night, what could be gooder.

After a great dynamic warm up led by Char we headed towards Goodge Street, bouncing around the busy streets of St Pancras and Russell Square for 1.8km. Upon our arrival we entered a room with lots of empty mastresses and bags of bedding. Jonathan from the American International Church, who heads up the shelter on Wednesday evenings, spoke about the importance of their work in Camden and how we helped each year.

Bed time!

The race was on - who could be the quickest pair to make a bed - armed with sheets, pillows, sheets and even a towel for the guest. People had various new and old techniques, Richard Foster appeared to make about 3 beds! Jacob and Imogen made their bed the fastest - very neat toooooo!

As we were packing up Jenna, from C4WS, talked about the amazing impact the charity was having on homeless people in the area - getting them rehoused, providing counselling, language classes and steps to move forward. This is truly inspiring stuff and it's fantastic to be apart of it.

Char's Star Jump Fun!

We headed to Russell Square for our evening's fitness session where Char took control, we did the following:

• Fast Lap of Square in 3 groups with various conditioning exercises added before each group went off
• Conditioning Sesh - Squats, Calf Raises, One-legged Calf Raises and Balancing - NICE!
• Another run around the Square!
• Star Jumps Relay!

Thank you to everyone for coming and to Char for leading the fitness session!

See you next week where we'll be making beds for the shelter and painting a cafe called Flapjack! Mmm flapjack..

PB out

An awesome 33 GoodGymers ran between 4-9km to help Cecil Sharp House, delivered 500 leaflets for Veg Box and collect Christmas trees

Welcome along to Alejandra and Farrah whose first time it was last night, we also had lots of second timers who attended last week and various regulars out for some January fun!

In the news this week:

1. TODAY there is the first GG Monthly Drinks of the year at the Beehive in Tottenham, hosted by GG Haringey - go along!
2. On Saturday there is the GG Islington Starter Session helping Comption Square Gardens (NEW TASK) - bring your friends!
3. JANUARY CHALLENGE - GoodGym nationally is aiming to complete 5000 Good Deeds and run 50,000 KM's - get involved and get those numbers in for Camden

We split into three groups to do three tasks across Camden. Here is what you did:

Group One to Cecil Sharp House (4km) led by PB:

Covering 2km on the backstreets of Camden on the way there we arrived to see Susannah and prepared everything as normal. This has been a monthly task since June 2016 and it's a great one. Splitting into three teams:

1. Freya and Frances swept and cleared the front of the building of cigarettes and other nasty stuff.
2. David and Lucy bagged up twigs, branches and sticks which had littered the lawn with the recent windy weather.
3. Everyone else scoured the huge flower bed, clearing it of leaves left over from December.

After cutting up a Christmas Tree we ran back to Somers Town, on our way picking up two trees for recycling!

Biggest leaflet sesh ever!

Group Two leaflet-ed for GG & Vegbox (8.5km) led by Katesh:

Combined they are Katesh, Kat and Pritesh led a team to Kentish Town and the Gospel Oak area to ditribute 500 leaflets for Vegbox and 100 leaflets for GoodGym. They covered an impressive 9km around the area and got rid of them all, that's amazing!

Vegbox is a fantastic local scheme organised by our partners Green Gym - read all about it!

Group Three Christmas Tree Collections (7km) led by Krosie:

Rosie and Katherine, both awesome taskforce members are now known as Krosie. They led a team of eight people to the Kentish Town area to find, collect and recycle Christmas trees. This is the last week we will be doing this fun task - everyone has done great!

Market tree-research

I hear Hanry and Ben climbed a lot and Team Krosie got an impressive 29 trees!

Lots of fun guys, thanks for coming - see you next week we are off to Castlehaven and Skip Garden - both regular faves! Sign up here!

PB out.