13 Goodgymers (and one phantom runner) hit the street, ran 2k and made good headway on the task at Bruce Grove Youth Centre

Shouts out to Helen and Naz who made it down to their first GoodGym session… your help was much appreciated guys! Give them a cheer folks.

The Task

This week we were heading over to Bruce Grove Youth Centre the task was to refresh the centres careers office which has seen lots of use especially after the local prospectus office closing down some years ago. The walls of the office were in need of some GGH TLC so we did what we do and got our paint on.

a little flakey

After a quick briefing we were off on a 1k run to the task location at Bruce Grove. On arrival Akin the task owner and manager of the centre greeted us at the entrance before giving us a little intro. He then lead us to the office we’d be decoration. The room isn’t huge and the floor space was limited but it was a snug fit for all of us and this only seemed to add to the good vibes and banter that ensued.. along with a fair bit of graft too, mind. The teams split into little groups with some getting paint, brushes and all we’d be using unpacked and ready to go while others used filler to err fill the walls which had become a little flakey / chipped.. along with others getting rid of blu tack left on the walls and spreading dust sheets.. people wasted no time in getting started with this and everyone was super enthusiastic. We managed to get lots done before having to clear up. We’ll be returning next week to get more done.

The Fitness session

Before the fitness session could commence everyone pilled onto the football table for a quick match of everyone’s favourite youth centre game. A few people had clearly spied the table on the way in and there was no way they were leaving without a quick whack. This week we chose to do our fitness session in the hall at the centre and the human beep test was on the cards.. this went down well considering most had not done this for many years.. school years to be precise. Everyone did a really good job in staying within the beeps but hats off to the girls who took it to the next level.. an International Women’s Day win for the ladies.. nice! After a quick breather and a round of high fives we were off into the night again. With a sprint along the home straight (Louise has clearly been working on her sprints – well done!) and a quick warm down we were done for another evening of goodness but not before mentioning Paul’s playlist which we had been listening to on the little boombox.. his playlist contained some pretty cool floor fillers and of course some Chaz and Dave.

Great session but I'm left wondering what happened to our phantom runner.. 🤔

Oh and thanks to FRP for the paint 👊🏽

Sign Up For Future Sessions Below!

Sign up for our next Wednesday nights group run & task Here, and join us at Chicken Town afterwards for a bite to eat.

We also have a task and mission this weekend check them out here Saturday and one Sunday

Don’t forget to stay in the loop over on our social media pages – Facebook / Twitter

Until next time folks - do good, stay fit & look out for the light

33 GoodGymers ran between 3-6km, made beds for the homeless and helped Skip Garden!

Thanks and welcome to all the new people that came this week; Chloe, Pierre, Enrica, Joanna, Marium and Emma. We also had a photographer and journalist from Runaway Mag, article and pictures to be released soon.

In the news this week:

1. Tom Benson is organising the GG race team monthly time trial on Sunday in Victoria Park if you want to take part. Full details here.
2. Next week is the GG monthly social, we're on tour down to Lewisham. More details here, it's gonna be good!
3. The BIGGEST TASK of the year is next week helping Grounded Ecotherapy lift and carry cement mix at the Southbank Centre on the Thames. SIGN UP HERE

C4WS Task by Frances:

Frances and Pritesh led 15 GoodGymers back to C4WS to help them make beds for the homeless shelter. It's a quick and simple job for us, but a great help to the volunteers organising the shelter.

Quick & simple

Most of the people in the group were either new to GoodGym, new to the homeless shelter, or in Axel’s case, new to making beds. Everyone got stuck in and made the beds in super-speedy time before we headed over to Granary Square to meet the others – ready for the Time Trial!

Skip Garden Task:

Fifteen of us headed to Skip Garden near Granary Square to help Global Generation. Our tasks this time:

1. Moving planters, pots, tables and bags of soil around the garden. This was like a massive game of jenga.
2. Turn the compost machine and sieve the contents to use as mulch in the garden.

We split into teams, got lots done and rotated the teams - well done everyone! After finishing our 'tasking' Gwen explained about Skip Garden and Global Generation the charity who runs it, here is some of what we found out:

• Existed for 12 years across four different sites in Kings Cross
• The team work with young people in the community to educate them on alternative living
• They keep bees who make lovely honey & there is a HONEY CLUB
• Also they keep chickens who provide lovely eggs for the cafe :)

Fitness:

First off we did a series of strength and conditioning exercises, including squats, press ups, tricep dips and plenty more. We mixed this up with some intervals and balancing exercises.

90 degree angle PLEASE

With both groups now combined we moved onto arm technique. When running your arms are as important as your legs, they are vital for efficiency and power. So to develop our arm technique we got into pairs and practised powering our arms at a 90 degree angle, have an open chest and no crossing of the arms!

Next we moved onto our monthly Time Trial - 880 metres around Granary Square. Everyone did brilliantly! Nice arms! I have a record of everyone's time, if you would like yours please just let me know. I'll be keeping an eye on times over the coming trials and I can keep you updated on your progress.

Sign up for next week here, we are breaking out of Camden and heading to the Southbank Centre to help Grounded Ecotherapy. It's a fantastic task,a really great charity and a big workout - come along and tell your mates too - it'll be a great intro to GoodGym for them!

PB out.