Vanity fair

Eleven South Londoners, cleaned one barista van, one storage shop, slung 50 boxes and even had enough time for; The Elle Energy One Mile time trial and 120 squats for good(gym) measure. That's one special dose of Peckham POW POW

In the afterglow of another glorious sunshiney day, the team from the south were raring to go for some Goodgym action this Wednesday night. The task in order this week, was to support the incredible work of Change Please A social enterprise that is housed out of our very own base-camp Old Spike Roastery.

Engineered by Cemal Ezel, after his life-changing big bang moment in a tea-house in Vietnam, that served up not only hot-cha, but support and guidance for local women who were deaf and blind. After witnessing such inspirational feats of human kindness, Cemal realised his life's mission was to relinquish his "self-servant lifestyle" as a city trader and design a business based on philanthropic values. Returning home he swiftly quit his job, teamed up with partners - The Big Issue and began his new life's mission to address issues of homelessness in London, via a mobile coffee van service that provides training and employment for people attempting to work their way out of lives on the street. Now with 8 fully operational vans operating all over the capital, it's safe to say that his social enterprise serves more to the community than just coffee.

So with housekeeping and welcomes out the way, we only needed to step outside our base to begin our more than worthy task for the night - The cleaning of one of the Change Please Vans. But with such a glorious hoard of helpers, we had enough hands on deck to split into 2 teams, with half rolling up their sleeves for the van and half stepping inside for the sorting and clean up of the storage store.

With inspiration fuelling our enthusiasm, the team buffed, cleaned, packed and stacked our way through 40 minutes of hard-tasking. Needless to say, Oops I did it again - blasted out my spotify hit-list that is. And yes that was a Die-Hard Britney Spears fan reference!!! Sorry/not sorry Rob

After the final countdown and successful competition of both efforts, we thanked our hosts and Espresso-ly moved out fast for the fitness portion of the night. Ameri-canna lie to you, this team must have been high on the fuel of giving back, because they were swift to the starting blocks ready and raring for the Elle Energy One Mile Challenge.

Stopwatch at the ready, I positioned myself high on the finishing hill and watched in wonder as each athlete came smashing their way through the finish line, with personal best times getting dropped all over the place as well, despite the last half mile of hill !!!!! Even Coops who was concerned that in Helena the pocket rocket's absence, his motivation would be lacking, still came flying in at 6 minutes 44 seconds - A full 10 seconds faster than his last time! Awesome!!

After the mammoth mile efforts, there was no stopping this courageous crew, who joined me on the rye for even more fitness fun! A Squat and Plyometrics combo of 120 leg buckling blasters, followed by partner-work planks and individual "To failure" oblique-obliterating plank-dips. AND............ Breathe!!!!!! Wow..... They even had enough energy in their tanks for the cool down jog and double back tempos back to base!!! What does a coach have to do around these parts to get their team breaking a sweat!!!! These guys are hardcore, so I think I need to push them even harder next time!!

Witness the fitness South London smashed it this week, for a good cause, for the fitness fun!

See you next time!!