Captain Fantastic and the Wonder Crew at the Railway Park

On a surprisingly warm evening in Croydon, a hearty band of GoodGym runners ran together and delivered leaflets to spread the word about TWO community events!

Ten runners made it along to help promote these; we welcomed back some runners who've been coming along with us lately too, and I checked the documents for a couple of people who weren't able to join us for the run too. More about that later!

We had a nice start, where I borrowed an idea from a recent Wandsworth group run; inspired by the heat, we each thought of our favourite ice cream while doing the headcount. (For the record, Croydon seems to be a Cornetto loving group, with mild mint choc chip leanings!) It's great to get the brain going while learning names and getting ready to run!

honks of support and respect

We made our way along a familiar route, stopping off halfway to do a little warmup. Here I took some inspiration from the lovely Richmond group, and we got many honks of support and respect from passing cars (I like to assume that all honks, funny looks, and 'run Forrest run!'s are supportive in nature)!

I briefed the group on the task; 5 pairs each had a certain street to focus on, and I gave the standard safety briefing, in which I reminded the group to imagine the snappy dog potentially on the other side of any letterbox, and other bits. What's objectively better than one community event? TWO community events. We were flyering for the South Norwood Clocktower Market, and the lovely arts/community venue, Stanley Halls.

The groups did a smashing job, and we regrouped in the lovely Addiscombe Railway Park (where we'll be returning for a task in two weeks !). Here we did a quick sprint relay, and a couple of quick exercises aimed to get our tummy muscles nice and worked out. We had some really nice support from some chaps sat down nearby, as well!

Stephen, aka Captain Fantastic

At this point, we headed back to our start location; despite the group briefly being separated, the brilliant Stephen made sure they caught up with us in short order! He also put forward the report title, as his leafleting group quite enjoyed the Captain Fantastic character on the Stanley Halls leaflet.

At the start location, we did some stretches and cooled down, and I spoke about our exciting return to Grangewood Park next week. It's also going to be our monthly social, so bring some money along if you'd like to join us in going to Box Park for some post run treats!

Drop me a message if you have any questions about our upcoming group runs, or about the amazing missions and coach runs we do to give isolated older people support and company. Shout out to Rachel and David who did a brilliant job on one in Croydon while we did the group run!