Forking around!

23 Do-Gooders met to garden for two community projects and run between 6 and 10km!

On a humid summer evening we met in the wonderful Camden to make the borough a better place and enjoy a run. Welcome to Tom Hall who joined us for the first time this week - nice to meet you!

In the news this week:

• Well done to Frances who last night hit 100 good deeds and got her wings! Go on give her a cheer!
• Next Thursday (4th August) is GoodGym Monthly Drinks, it's in Kings Cross and going to be a good one! We've the usual great features and International Pun of the Month!
• We are going to smash Regents Park 10km on Sunday 7th August, it's a flat course and we'll go for brunch afterwards. Come along and join!
  
• Lastly Lucia Gobbi is going to her homeland for a few months from September so the position of Camden Coach Runner Rep will be open, if you have been visiting your coach for more than 3 months you can put yourself forward. If you'd like more information please contact me or Steph Turner from GG Central.

We had two wonderful tasks for this evening - gardening for St Mary's Flats and some clearing for Abbey Community Centre!

St Mary's Flats Report:

After saying goodbye to the other group we did an active warm up with some countryside style dynamic stretches in there - open the gate and close the gate - oh yeah! We then headed around the corner to St Mary's Flats to meet Jon the Taskowner.

Our tasks were as follows:

• Planting five new flowers with compost in pots and placing them around the garden - Sarah led on this wonderfully.
• Weeding and clearing up a courtyard - lots of sweeping, litter picking and weeds!
• Litter picking the flat area in general, nice thinking Jackie worked a treat.
• The big one - digging up, pulling up and generally clearing two of the resident's gardens so they can grow vegetables.

Dozens of bin bags full!

Everyone did amazingly and we made a huge difference in such a short period of time. Well done! After a quick group picture we said our goodbyes to Jon and then headed to Regents Park for our monthly 'Inner Circle' time trial.

Fast!

It's exactly 1km around the Inner Circle, a brilliant distance to test yourself over. Tom smashed it in 4:02, Arnulfo came in at 4:48 and Isabelle conquered it in 5:23. Quick work guys!

We headed back on a gentle pace through Regents Park and met the other group for some important stretches before heading to the pub.

Abbey Community Centre report by Pritesh:

Abbey Community Centre is a fantastic place that does great stuff for its local community from their over 50s club to their play centre for younger children. They also have lots of great tasks for us to do and combining it with their location, a good 5k (with Primrose Hill in the middle), makes for a tough but rewarding night. Tonight nine of us headed out to Kilburn to see what Laura from the centre had in store for us!

Last year we helped to clear and prepare a wall for painting in the garden at Abbey, and tonight we were doing the same but for the children’s play area! We had been hoping to whitewash the wall ready for painting but with rain during the day painting was off the menu. That still left us with plenty to do! Tonight we:

• Cleared ivy from the wall
• Swept the play area floor
• Weeded around the play area and wall
• We cleaned a giant connect 4 set - thanks Lucia
• Scaled two ladders - thanks George and Steve
• Got covered in sap
• …and despite some close shaves did NOT bring down the Abbey internet cable!

All in all a good night’s work, we got loads done and you can really see the difference in the area! Hopefully we’ll get a chance to come back and whitewash the wall but we certainly look forward to seeing the area finished! With a group photo in front of the sparkling connect 4 done we headed back to Somers Town, we caught up some of the other group and had a nice run back to base. With the distances covered tonight we made sure we had a good stretch and then headed home (or to the pub)!

Thanks for coming as always, sign up for next week here.

PB out.