29 runners wrapped up and braced the cold last night to blast GoodGym Camden into a good start for February!

We were joined by another new face joining the herd - hey Alex! - hope you enjoyed yourself in the spoof Inside the Factory tour (more on that later) and will be back with us again soon. Why not go and give him a cheer for becoming a fully-fledged GoodGym runner now?

After a quick intro speech, Louise took 10 runners over to the American International Church to make the beds, and I explained a little more about our bigger task at Alara Wholefoods before we got outside and stretched.

C4WS Report (written by Louise)

Nine runners came on our 13th visit to the American International Church, helping make 17 beds for the homeless people's shelter. It was almost unlucky, but we narrowly avoided duvetgeddon in the hunt for a rogue bag of bedding! With our human chain in action, we achieved in a few minutes what would have taken an hour for the busy volunteers at the church. Afterwards we took a longer route to Granary Square for a quick fitness session and to take in the new light displays.

Alara Report

17 of us arrived at Alara dreaming of mulch and granola. Alex was there to greet us and, boy, was there a bit to get through tonight, even if we were so many.

Two types of mulch needed to be shoveled (by hand and spade - see pictures!) and moved into two different areas with buckets and wheelbarrows - one of the types was fresh and was used in the permaculture garden and the other was a bit more ripe and needed to be shoveled onto the beds above the tires. Another team were in charge of litter-picking the gardens outside the front of the warehouse. It's lovely to see how much difference about 20 minutes of litterpicking can do to brighten up an area that was otherwise dotted with crisp packets and gum packets. One last team was tasked with lifting and lugging the big branches that were in between the layers of the riper mulch and moving them to the back of the garden. With everyone working flat out and rotating tasks to keep warm, we got everything finished by 8pm and then the real fun began.

Alex outdid himself this time with showing us their operation at Alara; we got a behind the scenes Inside the Factory (BBC2) style tour! From seed milling (a huge pallet-full stacked up with at least twenty 10kg bags takes around 3 hours apparently) to compostable bagging, it was fascinating to see how the production line comes together to make the delicious granola we all know and love. After the factory tour had finished, Alex wizzed us over to the warehouse and gave us all a box of their new fancy product; acai bowl powder!

The extended factory tour meant that we didn't have time for a few laps of Granary Square, but instead ran home via there so we could catch a glimpse at the new light displays. Very Canary Wharf of them, don't you think?

NEXT TIME

Community, Community, Community: Liz has set up a few tasks for us next weekend at Camden Highline. There are three in total and you can sign up to all of them right here.

Next week: We're going back to C4WS next week as normal, but there'll be a bigger task that I'm working to confirm in the meantime. Should know more in time for the Monday weekly email. Get your name down for next week's run here.

LET'S GET SOCIAL! As I mentioned at the end of the run, we've got a Camden Socials WhatsApp group. John has organised a pub quiz for us on the 20th February (Thursday night) that you can sign up to there. The next social after that will be axe-throwing in March (organised by yours truly), so plenty of variety on top of our regular appearances at the pub after Wednesday runs.

See you next week!

Happy running in the meantime

26 intrepid and festive GoodGymers fought through the wind and ran to come along on what is Camden's last group run... of the decade!

Shoutout to Steve for the excellent punnage this week.

We welcomed another soul to the herd - hello Linsey! Hope to see you back with us in the new year. We also had a tourist visitor, John, usually of Birmingham but who had been down doing the Run Leader Training in Somerset House and thought he might come along for a cheeky run! Camden's always open to tourists if you fancy it!

Here is where I'd usually plug the next run, but there isn't one until January now, so please don't turn up to the Living Centre next week because we don't have a run planned!

After a very quick intro as time was against us, we ran straight on to the American International Church to make the beds.

11 men's beds and 3 women's beds were made up and Jonathan (the minister from the Church) told us that the original 12 people who had used the shelter when it opened early last month have since gone on to more stable housing and no longer need the help of the church. What a way to end our December runs with that lovely news.

But that wasn't all that Jonathan had in store for us; there was a carol concert put on by a choir and orchestra going on upstairs so after the beds were made, we hared upstairs to catch the end of Ding Dong Merrily on High! It turned out to be more of a performance than a singalong, but there was a bit of Bach, some brilliant Spanish choir singing and very, very lovely orchestral pieces for us to soak up before going back out into the rain for the slightly damp run home.

It was soon time for us to head back to the Crick and luckily the rain had slowed to the occasional spatter and we wound through the back streets before our stretches and cool down. The pub was absolutely heaving but good numbers in attendance as always- thanks again Abi for being our pub leader and booker, it's always appreciated!

Thanks a lot for coming and getting involved with GoodGym this year, for telling your friends about us and for keeping on and coming back week after week. I might be biased, but I'm pretty sure that Camden is the best of all the GoodGyms and it's all you folks that make it as wonderful as it is.

Hope you all have a happy and rested Christmas break, whatever you're doing. See you in 2020, recharged and ready to go (hopefully)!

2020 and on

NEW YEARS DAY: As New Years Day falls on a Wednesday, Jonathan and the church will be welcoming folks to the homeless shelter and we'll be running a smaller team up there to make the beds again. If you'd like to join, click anywhere in this sentence - we'll meet at the American International Church around 6:45 to make the beds in time for the 7:30 doors opening. It'd be lovely to have you with us and what better way to ring in the New Year?

FIRST OFFICIAL RUN BACK: While some of us will be running back to the homeless shelter on the 1st January, our first group run will be on Wednesday 8th January. We'll be splitting the group again with one half going back to C4WS and the other half doing the Annual Christmas Tree Sprint! More information and signup link is right here.

Aaaaaand breathe.

Merry Christmas!

Ben

A good sized group or what!

A wonderful sized group gathered on our hotel steps last night for our final run of 2019. We welcomed first time TH runners Laurel and Chris (thank you for your wonderful contribution to tonight’s run, and we hope to see you very soon). Yes, the December drizzle kept no one away as we whizzed through our warm up, shuttling through sweepy leg squats and high knee palm-taps before forming two groups for tonight’s double-task delight.

Two-tasking it for our final run of 2019

Lieke led a team of 6 over to the Parkview Estate where Catherine was waiting with tools and instructions on how and where to plant the new delivery of fruit trees, as she and other members of the Residents Association work tirelessly to transform this beautiful spot into an environmentally friendly, edible estate. I meanwhile took a team of 20 over to Meath Gardens where brilliant Joanna and Jane were waiting in the cold patiently for us and were brilliantly prepared! We had such a lovely variety of tasks to choose from: staking trees, planting trees, moving mulch, shifting woodchip…Lots and lots to do, and the large team were kept very busy right up until 8pm.

Our final visit of the year to The Fitness Tree

And so we said our appreciative goodbyes, posing for pics, rolling eyes, and jumping for joy before making our way over to our favourite fitness tree for tonight’s fitness session. Steve, our resident running chief (thank you Steve, you have breathed new life into our drills) led our running tonight, with Leo and Isabelle heading up the hare team (the runners wanting to take it a bit easier for a variety of reasons), who headed out for the lap of the park with a good headstart before Steve led the greyhounds, tasked with catching them up. The runners arrived back at the tree panting but ready for the tree’s signature move, the beloved Bulgarian split squat before moving onto the tripod push up, standing crunch, plank with sweep & kick (eugh, what a way to see out 2019 – well done, everyone), and then we made our way back to our beautiful hotel, where we’d kindly been given a large room for the night and were able to enjoy Sarah’s homemade mince pies, Chi’s Dead Man’s Fingers rum, Laurel’s game-changing chocolate stolen, and lots of lots of nattering and laughter. 2019 – you have well and truly rocked.

Our truly dedicated Task Force

A big shout out tonight to our incredible task force: to Lieke for leading the Parkview task, and other Community Missions this year; to Leo for some great pics and leading some fabulous Community Missions this December, to Isabelle for managing our growing social side of things (we’re getting there!) and heading up tasks, and to Bryon for being on board with everything, always in the background and leading some great Community Missions too.

Thank you to our beautiful Borough

It’s been an incredible year at Tower Hamlets: we’ve made more new friends in the Borough, and had some wonderful times, from our evenings at Parkview and Meath to enjoying the Council’s brilliant #BigCleanUp, to our game changing nights of 5-aside in Shoreditch with the wonderful Get Fit Feel Inspired team.

2020 looks set to be a great year – we are SO LUCKY to enjoy the company, drive and determination of some of our Borough’s most dedicated individuals and organisations, who see community as something more than a hashtag: a word that means coming together like no other, for smiles, sweat and for the long haul. We here at GoodGym Tower Hamlets feel blessed and unbelievably appreciative, and can’t wait to see you in 2020.

Have a wonderful break, everyone.