Gravel (with GoodGym), it's not just a road surface, it's a lifestyle!

With two group runs left until the end of our January Challenge, Sam was keeping his fingers crossed for a high attendance as this group run would not only contribute to the amount of good deeds, but since this was the longest group run distance, it would add a lot of kilometres to the distance target.

13 out of the 14 GoodGymers that came out tonight met at Old Spike Roastery for the start of the group run. We waited slightly longer as Alex was running late. Yet, knowing it was a longer run, Sam skipped the warm up, but delivered his typical GG speech including his ice-breaker question which was two snap polls to determine whether people liked Haggis and crunchy or smooth peanut butter as it was going to be Burns Night and National Peanut Butter Day.

It was pretty much a straight victory for "yay" to Haggis and "crunchy" peanut butter.

Every day I'm shovellin'

Sam led the group out of Old Spike with Katy backmarked (both ways). We ran down the busy Rye Lane through the dark cycle/walking paths of Surrey Canal Walk before reaching Old Kent Road crossing over to the quiet backstreets of South Bermondsey. After running 3.7k, we arrived at Galleywall Nature Reserve to meet Emma, who lives close by.

Straight to it, Eddie talking through the two main tasks and one smaller task on offer. Sam split the group calling out on who wanted to shovel gravel into wheelbarrows: Isaac and Nathan were keen whilst operating the wheelbarrows: Daryl and Laura put their hands up. On the other end, when Daryl and Laura would tip the gravel onto the pre-determined areas, Alex and Elena would be there to rake it out to a smooth surface. The second major task was to secure three wooden beams into the growing bed, so that visitors and gardeners can walk on these beams rather than on the soil. More shovels were needed to dig out the soil, so Andrada, Emma, Katy, Sander and Steve took on this task. Finally, Tim took on the smaller task of finding bags of leaves and bringing them back to a pile that had already been stacked up for the leaf mulch they want to make. Maria was our resident photographer and videographer as she wants to start a TikTok account for us!

After 30 minutes, we had finished the three tonne bags of gravel (they weren't all full), secured the wooden beams and brought over the bags of leaves. Finishing the tasks with 10 minutes to spare!

Eddie was very pleased that he took videos and photos to share with the Galleywall Nature Reserve committee. We will be back at the tailend of February to get the reserve ready for Spring! We all ran back apart from Elena and Emma as they live closeby and Andrada peeled off towards the end to go home. The rest that stayed on made it back to Old Spike and were treated to Lindy's belated 200th good deed cake. We ate it for her as unfortunately, she dropped out from tonight's task last minute.

Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! It was a long run than our usual distances, but we managed to blitz through the task in 30 minutes in our alloted 40 minutes. Thank you to Katy for backmarking and thank you to all for consistently coming to these group runs - it means a lot for me. Next week: it's the last one for our January Challenge and we're cleaning the local streets up with a "litter pick bingo".