What a banging evening of running and doing good from the rockstars of GoodGym Lambeth!

We kicked off by welcoming Tasha, Jon, Saoirse and Georgia to their first run with us - give them a cheer!

FUN FACT: Loads of Lambeth buildings are named after prominent Afro-Caribbean figures. Max Roach was a Jazz drummer from NYC 🥁

This week’s task was a new one for us - Loughborough Community Centre at Max Roach. It is an awesome place for children in the local area - they host a whole range of clubs and activities. Over the school holidays they had about 200 children who came to play together and have a meal every day.

We split into a few groups to get there (walking, chill run, long run) and met Candice who gave us a bunch of jobs:

👉Barrowing wood chip from outside the sheds to the One O’Clock Club’s vegetable garden.

👉Rearranging the logs into seating areas

👉Sweeping the entrance and concrete areas

👉Dismantling planters

👉Weeding in the vegetable patches and ‘mud pits’

👉Getting rid of the bindweed in the compost area

👉Watering the plants in the poly tunnel and vegetable patch

I’m getting tired just listing them!

So our wondrous team of GoodGymers got to work shovelling and pulling and transporting and clearing. It was a sight to behold.

And after half an hour we’d blitzed the place. Props to Lauren to finishing that mud pit!!

We then headed back for a biscuit 🍪

Top work everyone!

NEXT WEEK is a big one - GoodGym’s 10th Birthday! Our no.1 task is to get a photo in front of Lambeth’s best known landmark (after the London Eye…) but then we’ll have a couple of task options:

• A bunch of jobs at Hillside Gardens

• Clearing some weeds at Papa’s Park

And then the real party begins…AT THE PUB. 🍻 Click here to sign up!

40 runners hit the road last night for all manner of gardening jobs and some litter picking at the delightful Kennington Park.

First off we welcomed new runners into the fold - cheers for coming along Lucy, Anna, Hannah and Louisa!!

And then we had some congratulations to give:
Steven has now smashed his 50th good deed and Michael is on a massive 100 good deeds!! They had the honour(???) of wearing the cape of goodwill and the wings of glory for their incredible contribution to the community.

Nice one guys!

And then we had to say goodbye 😢 Long-time Lambeth runner and ultra reliable taskforce member Lucy is back off to bonnie Scotland. She’d done 123 good deeds before last night, and has a group run streak of 39 months (3 years, 3 months and 3 days actually) which is just nuts. She will be so missed but we know when GG Edinburgh kicks off, she’ll be there!

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Then we ran. Steve lead a 4k route and the rest of us had a direct 2.5k run. We were met by Rita and Mariette who instructed us with some pretty specific jobs.

Just a little bit off the top, please.

✂️ Snipping lavender

🌳 Trimming the big (yew) bushes

🚮 Litter pick off on the fringes

🌱 Up-ROOT-ing some ‘tree of hair-ven’ saplings

🌺 Getting the Wisteria out of one’s eyes

CHIP CHOP

We split into small groups to tackle each task and got to work.

There was some super even snipping from Lucy, Phoebe & Hannah and Freddie was hot on their tail, sweeping up the split ends.

Team litter pick was on fire: Tim found some old Country music CDs, Phil was picking up every cigarette butt he could possibly find and Magda, Frances & Marina collected 2 massive bags of rubbish between them.

After half an hour and a very important headcount, we left.

Shears m’dears!

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And what a treat we had to look forward to from our Bake Off Sweet-stakes!

A perfectly moist orange and almond cake from Phoebe, a spectacularly colourful angel cake from Steve and an expertly executed antigravity cake from Samantha. 🍊👼🍎

YUM 👅

See you next week for a brand new task - painting and gardening at Loughborough Community Centre - and BISCUITS! Sign up here.

45 GG runners turned up tonight for a couple of mega gardening tasks.

At the start, we welcomed new runners Phoebe and Matt and congratulated Carol for reaching 50 good deeds, Elise for reaching 200 and Frances for reaching 250.

ABSOLUTELY SMASHING

Steve also awarded Tom Benson his own personalised bottle of beer for his utterly incredible organisation of the GoodGym Olympics!!

A team of 5 walkers (mostly whacked from some incredible racing at the Bath Two Tunnels) headed off whilst Tom gave the rest of us a good warm up.

We then split in two: 💥Most of us ran 2k to Brixton Windmill to do a load of weeding in the play area. 💥A smaller group took a 3k route to Agnes Riley Gardens to help fill up some planters.

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Brixton Windmill is London's last working Windmill don'tcha know! And it provides flour for Brixton Prison's bakery as well as The Old Post Office bakery in near Papa's Park (do check it out!). They provide regular tours of the Windmill to locals and are in the process of building a visitor centre to host school groups and more community events (they already host the Bread and Beer Festival in May 👅)

Our job this time was on the outside of the Windmill, pulling and scraping all the weeds out from around the play area equipment. We promptly got to work with 7 large hoe/scraper devices, a few small forks and a whole load of gardening gloves.

There were big weeds, small weeds, shallow weeds and far too many stubborn weeds. Commitment to the cause was strong however with some relentless deep root excavation. We filled up a MASSIVE bag of weeds and even brushed away the debris.

Bang tidy.

We then headed back down the hill (with obligatory stops for press ups, jump lunges and squats) and took on our Home Stretch Strava segment (well done Dharmesh - 12 seconds!).

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Here's the lowdown from Tom and the Agnes Riley Gang:

So a merry band of 15 of us took up the mission and headed to Agnes Riley Gardens to meet Adrian. The mission as far as we were aware involved planters, nothing more. So off we jogged lead up by George we all made it there safe and sound. Adrian greeted us with a plethora of tools, including forks, spades, hoes, wheelbarrow…..spades, it was a right box of tricks, Christmas had come early for team Lambeth. So the main operation was to move some planters onto a new patch of soil. However before we moved the planters we had to level the soil, as the patch was on a slope. So banded with our lovely tool set we got down to shovelling soil from the high point, loading up barrows taking it 5 meters to the low point empty it, and giving it a rake. We repeated this motion more times than I could count but the end effect was we had a level playing pitch it was quite a sight!

Whilst this was going on a band of three Lambeth members got going on tidying up the surrounding allotments, making them weed free - the place looked cracking.

Once the ground was level, it was operation move the planters into place. Now these bad boys looked quite heavy however thankfully they came apart in two sections, the legs and the body. This made life loads easier, and before we knew it we all 4 of them in place. Adrian was happy we all patted ourselves on the back for a job well done and then ran back to HQ.

Nice work Lambeth - also while I’m here just want to say a massive thanks for my present last night, loved it and will save it for a special occasion, its currently chilling as I type. Really made my day, you are a wonderful bunch and thanks for so many of you coming along and getting involved, it was mega. Nice one team.

Tom

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And off to the pub we went, for many beers & the bake-off draw!

Cheers GG Lambeth! 🍻

See how they run.

33 absolute heroes including 5 first-GG-run heroes (nice one Jessica, Ileena, Camilla, Hannah and Rob) scurried off in two directions; some in search of the Portico gallery in West Norwood and others ran to the Ruskin Park Community Garden near Loughborough Junction.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFORMATION: The Portico is a hub of activity with art exhibitions, yoga classes and crafts workshops on offer, as well as being a storage facility for the amazing West Norwood Feast. RPCG is a space for locals to grow their own produce and learn how to do so.

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George and Nicky lead the run to the Portico and had this to say:

We ran through Brockwell park and up to the Portico Gallery, where John, the West Norwood Feast gang, Methuselah the cat, and an Ibizan Hound (new addition) were waiting to greet us.

We quickly got to work and separated tables that were fine, from those that needed various repairs, so that they could then be made ready for next month’s Feast. Half an hour later, with all tables sorted and neatly stacked, and with the Feast volunteers delighted with our work, we ran back down the hill to Brixton for a stretch.

POW💥

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The rest of us were at Ruskin Park for a serious amount of weeding - some rooting out the little weeds in the fruit cage and others finding zen in the upheaval of massive amounts of our familiar foe, bindweed.

After a cool 25 minutes we’d blitzed the place and headed off to find some grass for a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (abs workout version). Tim liked it but said it needed a GoodGym theme (that’s your homework, Tim).

We ran back, fitting in some long wall-sits and squats (with bonus calf-raises 🐮)at some stubborn traffic lights and finished off sprinting our Home Stretch Strava Segment. Congrats Pippa and John - you won! 🎉 (Join our GG Strava club if you haven’t already.)

Nice one everyone - smashed it. 👊

Hope to see y’all next week for a trip to Brixton Windmill/Agnes Riley Gardens (and the pub). Sign up here.