Hounded by weeding tasks

Sam was super excited for tonight's task as it was with a contact that we hadn't run to before, but helped last year once. It was a change in task (again) as the referred task had completed their task by themselves and no longer needed our help, which was a shame. Yet, it did mean a shorter run for those who came tonight.

Originally, the group run had 12 people, but it slowly whittled down to 8 people including three newbies. In the end, Abie and Az came for their first GoodGym ever! Abie had signed up on the day and was too eager to wait a whole week and decided to come - great decision as she enjoyed it immensely. Az, unfortunately, took the wrong train and arrived at the task with 20 minutes to spare, but got a sense of what GoodGym is all about and met everyone. Welcome again to the both of you!

Back at Old Spike, Abie, Daryl, Emma, Gemma and Sam waited until 18:45 before Sam proceeded with his GoodGym speech and warm-up as he knew they would be meeting Olive at the task as it was closer to her home than running to Old Spike.

After the warm-up, Sam asked the ice-breaker question, which was to do with the fact we were about to go to an Orchard: What is your favourite type of apple?

We had "Pink Lady" from Emma, Abie said "Auburn" whilst Gemma and Daryl both went for "Granny Smiths" and finally, Sam said "Golden Delicious"....which might have gone out of fashion...

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The therapy dog

A 1.4k / 8 minute run from the Old Spike lead us straight to Cecile and Olive, who were about to get the garden bins from the front of the church.

Cecile kindly introduced herself and gave a background to the church and Orchard before telling us about her friendly six year old Basset Hound (forgot her name...) - she had a bit of a bark, but was overly friendly with everyone.

Cecile had a few tasks for us and we had around 45 minutes to tackle them. Firstly, Abie, Gemma and Olive took care of the first task, which was to weed around the front of the Orchard and parking lot as it had become overgrown.

Emma had the whole second task to herself as she concentrated on de-weeding what I called the "reflection" path - the circular path that people could walk to enjoy the Orchard.

Finally, Daryl and Sam moved a empty, but heavy planter from the front to the back of the Orchard. They stapled two to three layers of black tarp/mesh to line the planter before Az appeared and took over Sam's role. What was left was to fill the planter with soil as the bed would be used to plant wildflowers. However, the soil that was re-used had loads of potatoes, which most people took home - what a treat!

The night ended with a quick "8 exercises in 8 minutes" workout before all of us apart from Olive ventured to Clock House for our monthly social, where we caught up and got to know the newbies and talk about people we don't like (amongst other things....how wholesome).

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! It was a shorter run, but one that was needed after the Big Half on Sunday! This did mean the task was longer than usual, so thank you for sticking with it and getting all three tasks done! Incredible! Great to catch up over drinks at the Clock House afterwards too.

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Thank You Cecile

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cecile who immediately said "yes" after contacting her as a last minute replacement 48 hours before. It's great that we caught you just in time before you head off to Wandsworth and I hope we can continue this relationship with St. Clement's Orchard through Leonie in the coming weeks and months.