Thirty for Hurty?

30 people donned their running gear and congregated in a 'sort of' flash mob style at Somers Town this Wednesday. I say 'sort of' as mobs sound aggressive, we were far from that. We stood and had a nice chat, and did a nice stretching routine courtesy of Paul Bown before breaking into 3 groups and setting off on our various missions.

One group went north to help Marianna in Dartmouth Park. Here's a quick report:

So on double whammy night Shaun threw in a surprise third activity - a mission in Dartmouth Park Hill. A hill? 5k away? Sounds like a job for Pritesh , Sophie and Danica! So off we all went, we followed the group going to Skip Garden before peeling off and making our way at a good pace past Tufnell Park and up the hill to Marianna's flat.

Once there we were shown the offending lightbulb that needed changing with a warning that apparently there was something of a bug's graveyard in the sconce! We leapt to the task and soon all light was restored and we managed to dust and clear all four sconces in the room. With a quick tidy up we were saying our good byes to Marianna and we were back on the way for a good run back to base.

We arrived with seconds to spare - a simple task but one that makes a big difference. With that another GoodGym Camden was done, we had a stretch and headed to the pub to eat cake (thanks Sophie) and celebrate Danica's one year GoodGym anniversary.

Another group went to the Skip Garden at Kings Cross to turn the compost machine. Here's what Paul Bown had to say about it:

One of the tasks tonight was at Kings Cross Skip Garden, a local project that is growing each time we go there. The 12 of us ran over to the task with a gentle pace before splitting into two groups of 6. Richard Foster (GoodGym legend) took the first group and did some relay/training sessions around Granary Square. I took the second group to get started processing the compost, to produce the much needed substance we took it in turns (30 seconds each) to push around the lever of the machine. Hard arm work! After filling two buckets the two groups switched around. Both groups had lots of fun!

We then run the 2.5km down to Russell Square to meet the rest of the GoodGym Crew.

The other group headed to the Calthorpe Project near Grays Inn Road.

The project offers a variety of garden based initiatives for local people; offering courses for Adults with learning difficulties, food growing opportunities for local female Bangladeshi groups, and gardening clubs for the elderly. Every now and again garden co-ordinator Gavin needs some help with heavy jobs. He's recently had a nasty infestation of a particularly virulent weed that needed some heavy fork action. We duly obliged.

He also wanted the contents of a bed ( ie the plants!) Moving from one area to another. Not a particularly difficult job but one we could do in 20mins but would have taken a few hours to do on his own.

We finished in good time and headed to Russell Square where we met the Skip Garden Team and engaged in a new running based game 'Surge around the toblerone with the Median man', where runners would run hard for 30secs before jogging back to meet the Median man as We jogged around the edge of the triangular park. Much more exciting in person I'm sure you'll agree.

We managed to shoehorn some partner exercises into the evening, before the final denouement - a big team relay round the park. Given the random nature of selection the race was surprisingly close with a few seconds between 1st and 5th place. We dragged our bodies home for a stretch before a hefty group headed to the local drinking establishment for some slightly dodgy post run hydration. Wizzo!