Sevenation Army

A heavenly seven ran 3km, pulled up a passageway's worth of weeds and smashed a challenging fitness session.

Thank you this week to Stuart for this super appropriate title pun, good work!

How lovely to welcome Chris along for the first time! He's certainly not a newcomer to GoodGym, having done over 200 good deeds - mostly hanging out with the GoodGym Camden team - but new to our own little brand of south London goodness. Before we headed out onto the streets, we had a few things to talk about.

• On December 13th, there will be a community mission to Living Well, sign up here to join in.

• Our Christmas social is on December 6th, sign up here, so we can finalise numbers.

We also had some rather special things to celebrate, with Bradley turning 30 and Stuart hitting the 50 good deed milestone! Stuart has been with us from the start in Penge, running regularly, going on tour to other areas and building up his running confidence to take on a hilly 10k race in Crystal Palace Park and then his first half-marathon in Riga, with the GoodGym Race Team. Well done Stuart, we're all very proud of you reaching this point and look forward to seeing you in your black t-shirt.

Our warm-ups here in Bromley are always a little 'cosy', with our little patch of pavement outside being a thoroughfare for passing commuters, so we got nice and close and tried hard not to bash knees, good work! Tonight's task took us to a brand new venue, the Salvation Army in Penge, so a short run down the High Street. We were met by Major Paul, who was keeping an eye on the evening's band rehearsal. Heading around the side of the building, we ventured into the passageway that we were to tackle this evening. This space is used by families to access the Sunday school and by playgroups during the week. As you can see from the 'before' photo, the weeds were trying their best to encroach on the path and needed our attention.

With our bare hands, we got stuck straight in and cleared everything we could. With the walls around the space being high, there was plenty of moss and Chris made good use of a metal latch he found lying around, to fashion a moss-basher. As we worked, we talked about how the space could be used in a way that will feel welcoming and will encourage people to enjoy being outside. Bradley suggested a community garden, starting small, with some pots and maybe expanding into bigger planters as time and confidence build. It would be nice also to have some seating here, so it becomes a communal space to sit and think, or chat. I think we will be returning!

Before we left, we packed up the three sacks of weeds, took a group photo and an 'after' shot (check it out!) then ran a slightly longer route back towards the park for our fitness session. Finding a pool of light, we tackled some high intensity intervals, rounds of 40 seconds active/20 seconds rest. It was a mixture of upper body and lower, with burpees to round it all off. The heckling at this point was quite something...just time for a quick stretch and to look forward to next week, when we will be delivering flyers for Stanley Halls - sign up here to join in.

See you soon!