Happy Birthday Two Us!

A warm evening. 2 community projects in need of a hand. A group of 29 lovely runners.

These elements combined beautifully last night for GoodGym Croydon's second birthday.

The runners

It was great to see some new faces last night! Liz, Marcelo, Dre, Chris R, Heather, Catherine, and Chris T all joined us for the first time, and got to join in with the GoodGym Croydon magic! It was also great to see a few runners back who have been part of the group's journey in the past, like Helena, and one of our pals from Lewisham and Bromley, Conroy, join us for a spot of GoodGym tourism!

The task

One group, led by Ellie and Juliet, ran 2km in total to help at Park Hill; helping get the Peace Garden ready for the Festival of Peace they're holding in June. This involved tackling weeds, moving plants, and generally getting the space a lot more ready for the festival. Another group, led by Helena, Amatare, Conroy and myself, ran around 4km in total to help our pals at the Addiscombe Railway Park do some bits in their community garden. Amongst other things we tidied around some apple trees, planted some lavender on a bank, and dug a MASSIVE hole that will eventually be turned into a pond. Both task holders were really happy with what the groups had done, a testament to what a big group of energetic runners can get done in a short time.

The social

Once we got back to the start point we stretched out and most of us headed over to Matthews Yard for a cracking birthday social. It was a cracking time, and great hearing people's different experiences running with the GoodGym community so far. There was even a beautiful group rendition of Happy Birthday To Us (I can only apologise for starting that off!). Kudos to Juliet, who has made our group all the things we love (inclusive, stimulating and fun) from our first run two years ago! Its been two great years so far, and great to see so many willing to get stuck in with our third year.

Here are a few dates for diaries, for those I chatted with about upcoming events:

• Every GoodGym Croydon group run starts at the same time and place, details about the next run will always be here

• GoodGym Southwark will be doing pacing at Burgess parkrun on Saturday if you'd like to join in with that - I'm doing my first pacing ever for 30 minutes!

• The GoodGym Olympics will be happening on the 30th June. Not as intimidating as it sounds, it's a big fun sports day in North London with GoodGym joining from all over; last year Croydon got a gold (three legged race), but it'd be great to have even more of us up there this year!