Bromley

Group run

A Whole Lopper Love

25 GoodGymers made their way 0.5km to help their local community in Bromley.

  • Elly Page
  • Ruth Taylor
  • Adele Prince
  • Erica harris
  • Neil Smith
  • Victoria Randall
  • POLLYANNA
  • Michael Kidd
  • Conroy
  • Marianne Noble
  • Bristol runner
  • Tim Lund
  • Louise Chambers
  • Matthew Parker
  • Bromley runner
  • Stuart Eaton
  • Frances Bonikowski
  • Clare Parkinson
  • Lauren Drew
  • Penny Jones
  • Nicola
  • Stephen Sin
  • Aimee
 
Tuesday, 25th of July 2017
 
Led by Adele Prince

On a beautiful summer's evening, 25 enthusiastic runners took to the streets of Penge for the first time, covering a few kilometres of running and tackling a further few kilometres of shrubbery, weeds and litter!

What a wonderful start to doing good in our new area! Fresh start point, fresh faces. It was great to have a few visitors to Penge from other areas, thank you to Ruth (Lambeth), Conroy (Lewisham), Matthew (Lewisham), Michael (Southwark), Tim (Lewisham) and Deb (Bristol!) for coming along to support our new runners this week. And what a lot of new runners! Let's say a big hello to Aimee, Neil, Stuart, Erica, Pollyanna, Lauren, Marianne, Elly, Louise, Penny, Charlie, Frances, Victoria, Louise, Nicola, Aime, Clare and Stephen!

If you click on a red name you can give this person a cheer :)

Before we headed over to Crystal Palace Park, we talked a little about coach running and missions - it turns out that most of our visitors are either coach runners or have been on missions, so the perfect people to talk to about visiting an older person!

How lovely now to just nip across a couple of roads on our first group run and find ourselves in our local park! We still had to get to know each other a little better though, so what better way than to get into a right old tangle? There was some superb communication and direction going on though and our three teams of tanglees were soon stepping back out into a big circle.

A short stroll took us to the big container, where Penny from idverde - the people who look after the park - was all set to pass us the many tools needed for this week's task.

  • litter pickers (professional ones, none of this grabbing rubbish with your bare hands!)

  • rings to keep the bin bags open (!)

  • loppers (popular)

  • shears

  • hoes

  • rakes

  • trowels

  • gloves (lots of)

Even with a big group like this, it was fairly easy to assign jobs, with people having a clear preference over which job was 'their thing', simple! Tools in hand, we headed off in different directions, with Deb leading the litter-pickers towards the children's playground (surprisingly messy) and the rest of us marching purposefully towards the path that skirts the edge of the boating lake. When we found our area I had to act quickly to try and get some 'before' photos, with everyone super-eager to get going! Our lopper/shearers couldn't believe their gardening luck when they saw what they had to do - they had a whole swathe of bushes to tame, with the best upper body workout at their fingertips (literally). On a lower level, we had a team of weeders clearing the soil underneath the shrubs and a team of rakers gathering the clippings and neatly moving them to one side for collection and composting. What great teamwork!

As time went on, I jogged over to see how our pickers were getting on, to find they had cleared the playground and were now on a mission to clear the whole park! I gathered and swept (people) and we regrouped to admire everyone's work, what a treat to step back and see the difference you can make in just half an hour.

Like a line of ants, we trailed back to the container to return tools, wash hands and gear ourselves up for the next fun bit...the fitness session. Each group run is different, depending on how far and where we are running. Sometimes our run itself is a challenge enough, but tonight we had the park at our disposal and a beautiful avenue of trees to weave in and out of...and weave we did! In pairs, after a little warm-up, we played Rock, Paper, Scissors, with the 'winner' getting to run out and back. The 'loser' had the challenge of working through a series of strength exercises (squats, jumping-jacks, lunges, press-ups...). Looking around, I saw people working very hard, people looking puzzled as they tried to work out who the winner was and people looking well and truly puffed. Great teamwork everyone!

We stayed in the park to stretch, with the grass being the perfect place to have a little lie down, knowing that our new start point at the Bridge House would give us the chance for some cooling refreshment on our return.

Thank you everyone for coming along, it really was a pleasure to meet you all and to show you what this GoodGym thing is all about. Why not join us next week, when we will run over to Penge East Community Centre to do more good?

Report written by Adele Prince


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🏃‍♂️ GROUP SESH // TASK TBC

Monday, 8th of April 2024 19:00 - 20:30
Led by Mark Gilyead


Bridge House

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