GoodGym can be infectious

As we waited outside Old Spike for Marcus to finish up cleaning, we enjoyed the warmer weather than the inferno that was presented to us inside. We met newbie, Michelle, who came over from work in Mayfair, but lives in Acton! Wow, we appreciate her attending our GoodGym session, which is so far away from her work and home. Thank you, Michelle and I hope you'd enjoyed your first GoodGym experience!

On a warm and muggy day, waiting inside Old Spike wasn't ideally as we welcomed Alastair, Alex, Becky, Daryl, Emily, Emma, Gemma, Paulin, Mikhail Nathan and Tim as Sam quickly went through the GG intro speech before heading outside to get warm on the Green!

After our warm-up, Sam's ice-breaker for tonight was a question on yesterday, which was: Yesterday, was International Day of Charity, what is your favourite charity or the one you donate/fundraise to the most?

We had the obvious ones like GoodGym, Cancer Research UK, NSPCC, RSPCA and MacMillan, but Clare gave us a heart-warming answer as she had fundraised for a friend who was in a coma. Charities are not just organisations, but are acts of kindness.

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Arigato, Kanpai

With Sam leading from the front and Lindy backmarking, we made it to Salvation Army Camberwell Corps within 20 minutes to find Folarin, Mikhail and Paulin already there. Paulin was helping Valentina setup the cleaning stations by filling buckets with warm water.

As we piled in, Olive, Magda, Vic and Abigail met us at the task as we had to split the group into three:

• Team Gardening, who weed the outside garden and a partial part of the parking lot consisted of: Daryl, Mikhail, Olive and Vic.
• Team Window Cleaning, cleaned all the windows inside and out consisted of: Clare, Elena and Gemma.
• Team Disinfecting and Cleaning Toys, the rest of us assisted with the main job of the evening, which was to disinfect and clean the toys in the cupboard and all around the main hall as the Salvation Army Camberwell Corps prepare for the toddlers to come back and use this space next week.

Within 45 minutes, we managed to complete our main task and even put all the toys away back into the cupboard, which in itself is a task of minds (how do I find all these toys in?!). After a quick group photo and small speech to Daryl for his selfless act on Sunday to help another GoodGymer cross over the finish line at the Big Half, we ran back to Old Spike.

Since it was the first Wednesday of the month, a few of us walked over to Kanpai for a couple of rice beers, sake, corn fritters and skewers to say our goodbyes to this establishment before they move "homes" from Peckham to Bermondsey.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Firstly, a massive thank you to my taskforce team, Daryl and Lindy for backmarking the run there and back. Thank you to the rest of you for coming along as you saw that power in numbers means we can get not one, but three tasks done within 45 minutes! Thank you to those who stayed on afterwards for a final farewell drink to Kanpai before they move to Bermondsey!

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Thank You to Valentina

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 Valentina who recently moved over here from the US and was covering Catherine! Thank you for having all the items and tools ready for us to tackle the tasks and we hope you saw a massive difference within the 45 minutes that we were there. We will be back in November and we'll arrange that shortly.