Step-ping stone to a new you

16 First time GoodGym Runners ran to 2-3k to help a Community Play Project

It's January- time for new years resolutions and increased pressure for us all to make an effort to get fit..... Fortunately GoodGym is here to make the step loads more more fun and fulfilling.

Starter Session

On Wednesday 16 new runners assembled at Somers Town Community Centre for a GoodGym Starter Session.This run was a chance for those who were new to running or hadn't run in a while to start getting involved. The run was a little bit shorter than usual but it still involved a good deed. We put our energy to good use by helping out at local play Project Plot Ten.

Somers Town- one of most deprived areas in London

We were met by Sally who manages the Project. She gave us a talk about the history of Plot Ten. It has provided after school, holiday and pre-school activities for children from the local area for the last 40 years and is run by a dedicated team of volunteers. They had 2 tasks for us- the first was to prepare the hall for decoration by yanking out thousands of staples- and the second was to tidy the outdoor 'sensory garden'. We broke into 2 teams and acted the jobs with gusto.

Sensory Garden for Children with disabilities

One team donned some gloves and headed outside to pick up the leaves, debris and rubbish that had blown into the garden area. This space is full of variety of sensory objects- like musical wind chimes and smelly lavender plants but can't be mad use of in this weather. It's great we could make a start in cleaning it up.

Staple yank race

The other group broke into teams of 3 and armed with staple pullers they race to see how many staples they could pull out of the wall in 25mins. There was loads and Sally said it would have taken 3 weeks to pull out the number we have done! Great work guys- that will allow Sally to get on with other more important jobs round the centre.

Run to Canal

We finished the evening off with a 1-2k run to Granary Square near Kings Cross where we performed a few fitness tests- running up some steps and monitoring our Heart Rate, and testing our leg symmetry with an agility test. Hopefully we'll help improve these in future GoodGym runs! On the way home some hardy souls took the long cut while the rest of us worked our way straight back to Somers Town Commmunity Centre. Nice job everyone!