Leaf It to Me / Man Vs Food

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Leaf it to me It was another resounding success for the Brixton Goodgym-ers last Tuesday night. Despite being an exceptionally chilled and blustery evening, about 25 runners were warmed up ready to go at 6.45 on the dot.

There was choice tonight - shifting tonnes of food for a Vauxhall food bank and digging, shifting and lifting in Myatt's Fields. Handily the group split almost equally in two and we set off.

Myatt's Fields posse

Our group, the Myatt's Fields posse (as they are known) had a shorter run but were heading to help clear leaves, wood and compost for the charity StreetScape - providing apprenticeships in landscape gardening to young people and the long-term unemployed.

On arrival, the runners were put through their paces in a series of running technique drills in the park, working on posture, fast steps (a la Mo Farah), straight arms and some seriously epic circular leg movements.

taken to the dump

It was then time to get to work; bagging compost, filling up industrial sacks of leaves and moving them to another side of the yard, and shifting an enormous stack of wood into the van to be taken to the dump later that night. Everyone wholeheartedly put their backs into it and the van was filled to the brim with over 1 ton (estimated but let's say 99.9% accurate) of wood, over 23 bags of compost were filled, and apparently 250 (!) bags of leaves were moved. (Note: the accuracy of the latter figure is debatable. There was some healthy competition between the leaf-bag-fillers.)

Dusting off, it was a light run back - making it just in time to fit in a warm down before the rain set in.

Man Versus Food

Fourteen is many things. The number of pounds in a stone, the number of lines in a sonnet, the minimum age limit to drive a 50cc motorbike in Italy, even the number of years Rama spent in exile in Hindu mythology. This week, fourteen was also the number of merry GoodGym men and women who braved the cold for a jolly jaunt up the Brixton Road to Vauxhall. At 8km this was to be one of the longer runs we’d taken on so far, but with Ivo’s wise words from last week’s coaching still echoing in our ears, we eagerly put plimsoll to pavement.

In short, the lovely people from the Vauxhall foodbank spent their weekend outside the local Sainsbury’s persuading the lovely people who shop there to donate some small, non-perishable food items to a good cause. Then they asked the lovely people from good gym to pop along, weigh what had been purchased, sort it by category and pack it into the crates to be stored until distribution.

"hung up their moustaches"

What ensued when we arrived, was a spectacle of to-me-to-you not seen since Paul and Barry Chuckle hung up their moustaches fifteen long years ago. With a speed and effortlessness of which apprentice candidates can only dream, we organised - everyone taking a role without fuss and performing like they were born to fill that niche and had been doing it every day since. Weighing, passing, packing, stacking - more care and attention went into maximising the efficiency of our crate-filling than went into the wrapping of many of our Christmas presents. Men who I’m sure had never before wished a shopping bag to be any heavier, cheered with delight as the scales tipped big, whilst women produced herculean feats of strength to lift soup stacked crates shoulder high to be stored. We found ourselves deeply concerned over whether beans and sausage should go in the ‘beans’ crate or the ‘meat meal’ crate, and one happy helper revealed much about his dietary decision-making when he quibbled whether fruit pastilles class as ‘fruit’ or ‘treats’. It provided my favourite confectionery anecdote since the friend of a friend of a friend blamed her inebriation on a particularly alcoholic bag of wine gums. And would sure make getting your five a day a lot easier.

"500kg of well-intentioned food"

All told, in just over twenty minutes, over 500kg of well-intentioned food had passed through our hands, a fantastically good effort. And what satisfaction to see a room transformed, crated order created from carrier bag chaos. And how that satisfaction was compounded knowing that the food we’d shifted would be used to feed people in need, and spare them that awful choice between eating and paying the rent or turning on the heating. The foodbank makes a huge difference to a lot people, and it was a real pleasure to help them out.

The sense of a job well done made the wind on the way back considerably more bearable. In fact - the only downside? Our ongoing dedication to doing calf stretches that involve putting your hands on the ground.

See you next week!