Embankment 5k? Absolutely Men-Tile!

17 GoodGym runners raced 5k in Central London after helping clean, carry and paint ceiling tiles for Makerversity

Summer 5k Race series

This week's Camden GoodGym Run was a little different as we travelled to Somerset House to take part in the 2nd race of the GoodGym- Makerversity 5k series. Makerversity is a shared making and learning space based in Somerset House. They provide workshop space for a number of interesting enterprises, and offer a range of learning programmes and work placements catering to people who might not normally be able to access them. Check out their blog here

Monumen-Tile Race

Brushing past a gaggle of London Fashion Week models and their trail of paparazzi we made our way to the 'race briefing room' in the bowels of Somerset House. Tom Tobia from Makerversity talked us through the task- we had a huge pile of ceiling tiles that needed to be separated, cleaned and painted. In true GoodGym style we broke into 3 teams and raced to paint as many tiles as possible in 45mins...it was monumen-tile.

Trail of dust

We were a blur of activity- lugging, wiping and roller-ing hard for 45mins. We were so fast we kicked up a huge cloud of dust....well, maybe the dusty tiles created the cloud but we were pretty amazing anyway. Melanie and David employed the 'quality over quantity' painting approach while Peter's gurn of concentration frightened nearby competitors. Spurred on by Marks howls of encouragement the race went right to the wire- with Sam, Peter, Richard, Freya, Lauren and Rachael eventually taking the victory by a mere 3 tiles!

The Tourist Slalom 5K

As dusk approached we got ready to race. We broke into 2 groups, with runners hey would predicting they would run slower than 24minutes setting or first and a slightly faster group giving chase soon after.The 5k route took us from Somerset House, past Big Ben, across Westminster Bridge underneath Lambeth Bridge and up to Tamesis Dock Boat Bar where we turned and legged it home.

They set off at a pretty impressive lick, and in-spite of having to slalom through tourists around Westminster they ran some very impressive times. Camden based runner Peter Downie roared home first- becoming the first man to run under 20mins in our race series. Ladies winner Hannah Copeland ran an impressive 24.30 (on her second run of the day no less), and Kerry ran a brilliant 28.48 on her first ever GoodGym run.

Here's the results;

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