35 excellent runners gathered at Papa's Park for our group run tonight.

We said a huge Lambeth welcome to 6 brilliant new runners - Anna, Jessie, Emma, Isla, Kate and Harriet

Next, we heard about these exciting events coming up in Lambeth and our neighbouring areas:

• A community mission at Herne Hill Halloween party at 7pm on Thursday 31st October.
• A parkrun takeover at Burgess Park with GG Southwark at 8:30am on Saturday 2nd November.
• The monthly kebab chase meeting at 10am on Sunday 3rd November at BaBa Boom Battersea.
• A big GoodGym London social from 6:30pm on Friday 9th November.

Lots of lovely things to get involved with :)

It was also SPOTM week and this week's very well-deserved winner of a unique assortment of National Trust pens, Puregym freebies, a bookmark and possibly the world's smallest notebook was Shauna. Despite only joining GoodGym recently, Shauna is already on her 15th good deed and her 9th for October. Huge kudos and thank you!

And onto the main event aka tonight's task.

We split into two groups to run there, David and Charlotte leading a slightly longer run whilst George and Nicky led a more relaxed party pace troop.

On arrival, we surprised Karen with the size of our group but quickly split into teams, digging up stones around the veg plot, moving planks of wood and clearing the area around the Bug Hotel. After half an hour, Karen seemed very happy with what we'd done and we headed back to base to enjoy some delicious cake expertly baked by Becca and Angela

Great work everyone, thank you so much and hopefully see you at next week's group run for more getting fit and doing good.

21 Westminster GoodGymers ran 7k to One Big Family to sort out all the clothing donations from the summer months.

So I was very scared the size of task and the amazing surge in numbers of energetic GoodGymers were not going to marry up but I was very pleased to be proved totally wrong!!

A touristy 3.5k Run South to Victoria lead us to a hidden gem of a charity One Big Family Victoria. With a tiny team of volunteers masterfully helping Westminster’s Homeless with 2 evening meals a week as well as vital clothing and sanitary products.

With the hot food donations this evening already plentiful we didn’t need to do our sandwich production line and instead sorted through 3 sheds full of clothing donations!!

Kids, Women’s and Men’s clothing being speedily and expertly sorted into boxes ready for distribution to local homeless people in the coming weeks. Obviously with night time temperatures dropping this becomes even more critical!!

35 minutes of efficient excellence as we had completed the task perfectly. Easy to access, tidy and ordered boxes complete we zipped back to base with a Spring in our step grabbing a picture with a GG York runner enroute!

Thank you so much for coming along and really hope to see you all again next week when we start our river take over near Little Venice where we will be adopting a section of river to up keep!

Finally a huge thank you and good luck to Westminster GoodGym regular Kate who has been a great GoodGym Westminster Runner!! Probably coming to the most sessions over the last year and us now moving out of London to continue her adventures!!

Have a great week

Smooth Running

Joel

Ten awesome people came down to The Queensbury on another super-hot Monday, this time to help out at Abbey Community Centre. No amount of ball-games are going to stop these amazing goodgym-ers from doing good in their community and so we ignored the tennis and the football and went for a run!

Hello and welcome to Tom who usually runs in Hammersmith and Fulham but was over this way for a spot of GG Tourism - we hope you enjoyed it.

Tonight we were off to Abbey Community Centre, they're down in Kilburn (and technically in Camden) and do an incredible job providing services to their local area to residents young and old. They have a beautiful community garden and our job tonight was to give it a good watering.

GG Olympians

After a quick intro - congrats to our GG Olympics participants - we set off only for Karen to have a twinge in her calf. We decided it would be better if she didn't force a run so unfortunately she had to head home - we all hope it's just a minor injury and you're back with us asap Karen!

We took a slightly different route to the centre today but it felt a more flowing run than usual and we still didn't avoid the inclines but no-one seemed to mind as much today. Once we were at the centre Simone greeted us and provided some much needed water. Once we had been watered we headed to the garden.

Stinky Butt

Armed with various watering cans and buckets we set about watering the thirsty plants. We started off filling our implements with water from the two water butts in the garden but some of the water was just a little bit too smelly so we switched to using the amazing expandable hose to fill up! With my cunning plan to not actually use the hose for watering we slowly but surely got the garden watered and even got to deadheading some of the plants (top job Lucy!).

Time soon caught up with us and with everything done we said our goodbyes to Simone and then headed back to base.

A lovely evening in the sun, great job by everyone - thank you. After our stretch we said our goodbyes and a few of us stayed for a drink, watched poor Japan go out of the World Cup in injury time and toasted Deborah for her impending nuptials this weekend - good luck!

Next week we are off to Stonebridge to work on the section of canal - it's just over 4km and the weather is set to be just as hot. Sign up here - see you then!

Cheers, Pritesh

p.s. Thanks to Claire for the great pun!

NINE amazing runners braved the heat and joined me to help Harlesden Town Garden and unbeknownst to them take part in a 1km time trial too!

What a Monday - it had reached 30 degrees in central London earlier in the day and it was still super hot as we met at the Queensbury for this edition of GoodGym Brent.

We said welcome back to Amy who was joining us for the first time since January - welcome back!

With everyone hydrated, we gathered for a brief intro in the sun, I explained that we'd be doing a 1km time trial this evening so that we'd have more entries to the GG Olympics and that we were off to Harlesden Town Garden to help them out with more clearing work.

Task!

With that done we set off on the run. The heat was extremely oppressive but we stuck together and got there in good time. Gabriel then explained what we had to do. There was some chopping back of a hedge but the main work was in clearing the path around the garden. Various bits of ivy and plants had been chopped down and we were clearing it out and chopping it down so it could be bagged and taken away.

With some hardcore efforts from Caroline, Scott and Claire to remove some very strong ivy roots - we reckon we're going to come back to tackle the rest - we all gathered for a group photo and the headed off for the time trial!

Trial!

We gathered in Roundwood park which is handily 1.07 km long around the perimeter. After an unnecessarily long intro and explanation of the route and with much strava-starting we got the first five lined up and off they went! While we waited for them to come round we discovered that the 1000m world record is 2m11s - crazy! It didn't take long for the first group to get back and then we swapped over and the next five went around...and Uthman went for another lap - now that is crazy!

Times are below (extrapolated 1km time in brackets) - great effort from everyone! (strava times may differ)

• Amy - 5m32 (5m10)
• Caroline - 5m48 (5m25)
• Clare - 5m50 (5m27)
• Claire - 4m56 (4m37)
• Ellen - 4m54 (4m35)
• Liz - 4m48 (4m29)
• Lucy - 5m49 (5m26)
• Pritesh - 4m12 (3m55)
• Scott - 4m11 (3m54)
• Uthman - 4m25 (4m07) ... and 6m08

Amazing

With that we recovered and then jogged back to base, stretched, marvelled at the football results and a few of us stayed for a drink and some GG Brent Olympic torch planning! Top effort from everyone, and whilst we may have wilted in the heat we showed our speed in that time trial!

Thanks and sign up here for next week - we're hopefully off to the canal!

Cheers, Pritesh

Nine brilliant Brent-ers came to the Queensbury, resisted the temptation to watch the England game and duly went on to shift THREE TONS of mulch for Watling dementia garden! What an evening!

Welcome to Luisa who joined goodgym for the first time.

Football

With the pub filled with football fans we quickly got everyone together and then gathered outside for a quick intro and headcount and then we were off. It's only a short run of just over 1km but it needed to short today as we were going to need all our energy for the task.

Three ton bags

We met Lia and Joanne who had also volunteered to help with the garden. They showed us how the main beds had already been mulched but needed more and how the remaining two or three beds were yet to be mulched. We split the group into diggers, carryers and spreaders and got down to business. At first we took up the slow and steady mantle but the spreaders were having to wait for mulch to be brought down so we re-jigged things and got digging that mulch quicker.

Not just mulching

With everyone hard at work Joanne was working on some other areas of the garden and despite the main focus being on the spreading of the mulch the group still managed to get some weeding, digging and planting done too!

Mulch frenzy

With around 15 minutes to go we still had nearly a whole ton to spread and so with a slight frenzy (sorry everyone) we put our game faces on and smashed out that last bag of mulch. We were done in time and even had time to brush up the spilled mulch to ensure that everything was set for the remaining planting and work that was to be done by other volunteers!

We hard a short run back to base and were in time to see/hear Harry Kane score the winning goal for England. The real winners tonight were also wearing red but they'd done so much more than just put the ball in the back of the net.

This garden will be fantastic and so much of it has been down to the hard work of GG Brent so do give yourself a pat on the back.

Sign up for next week here, we'll be running more next week helping to spread the word about some good old community activities. All will be confirmed soon!

Thanks again everyone, Pritesh

Eight excellent GoodGymmers ran to the canal to tidy it for local residents.

Meeting at the Queensbury, we were joined by Scott and Zivile for their first ever GoodGym run. Give them a cheer!

After a quick chat - mentioning the GoodGym Olympics (seriously check it out guys) - we set off. It was a 3.5k run and we found a lovely route through the local park, squinting at the sun and watching the dogs play. Let's do this more often.

Arriving at the canal, we were met by our task leader Jack who handed out our tools - grabbers, bin bags, gloves and high vis vests. Our task was to work along a stretch of the canal clearing litter. With the team looking dapper, they quickly got to work.

After 25 mins effort, we had filled 12 rubbish bags with an assortment of weird and gross trash. This included lots of cans, takeaway packages, a spiderman umbrella, shirt and trousers, and lots of crisp packets. Total Trash indeed. Jack was delighted with our efforts and rewarded the team with kit kats!

We ran back on a slightly more direct route, though up hill, and got back to base for a stretch.

A pleasure to see you again Brent! Pritesh is back next week.

ps I'm not sure some rubbish next to a picturesque canal was what Sonic Youth had in mind when they wrote 'Total Trash' but it will do 🎶🎶🎶🎶