3.5km for a sunset bonfire, weeding and wood cracking.

We welcomed a couple more new faces to the GG Southwark fold tonight and some old faces that we'd missed. After a quick GG intro, we set off up the familiar hill of Chadwick Road to Grove Park Allotments and to meet Lizzie. She already had a good fire going and lots of different tasks for us to get stuck into.

The optional task of bursting through the bonfire smoke in a Stars in their eyes manner may have occurred more than once.

(Watch this space for a karaoke social!) We were weeding the paths to widen them for wheelchair access, watering plants and clearing dead wood either into the fire or to dry for one of the allotment users wood burner. Sorting the thorny bits from the non-thorny bits was a bit haphazard but we survived relatively unscathed.

Once we'd finished up, it was another skipping warm up special as we made our way to Warwick Park for some glute work to finish off the session.

Hopping, clam walks and frog leaps were the order of the evening. This, in hindsight, was a little mean given two of our group had spent the previous days travelling back to the UK after epic trips. Nonetheless, the drills were finished with finesse and we ambled back in the final light of the day. Lovely.

What a glorious evening!

10 runners met in the dusk sunshine at the top of the very busy Peckham Rye to run a short run to get our hands dirty at Cossall Park.

After a warm up with a variety of different jumps whilst giving a mini intro, we set off in a totally different direction to Cossall Park to help the lovely Jaki and Allen. They manage the community grow beds which are built into the local park, engaging school children, scouts and local residents in outdoor activity and growing veg and plants. They also look after nearby Kirkwood Nature Reserve which they reclaimed which was an overgrown den used as a sharps dumping ground and a dog toilet.

It was lovely to see what they've been up to and we got set to work weeding in 3 areas with some wonderful gardening tools. With the radio playing, local kids playing near and a beautiful sunset to boot, we made light work of the weeding despite finding lots of hidden mini potatoes and lots of impressively long worms.

Jaki was pretty pleased with how much we had gotten through and had the orange squash ready for us once we'd finished. Deepak had to be torn away from turning earth so we may have to revisit or continue the gardening run (ha) this spring. Matt also had his nettle cuttings ready to brave making nettle risotto - we have a very practical group here in Southwark!

We said our goodbyes to the lovely couple but not yet to the park... when we arrived, it was clear that the play area could been used for a bit of fun so Jo set up a mini obstacle ... plank, sideways bear crawls, squats on the most unstable platform and a run through the rope gauntlet. The squats were pretty tricky but everyone survived (don't panic headoffice!) and finished by hanging off another implement and realising how difficult chin ups were.

Warmed up and a bit sweaty from the obstacle, we ran the short distance home at a quick pace, fuelled by squash and sunshine. If that's not a perfect Wednesday evening...

On a chilly evening 28 wonderful GoodGymers met in Camden to tackle two tasks head on!

The news last night was that there are new members of the Camden TaskForce, (Polly, Meredith, Jess, Chris and Frances will be joining Pritesh - woop woop. Also we are racing the Regents Park 10k and Hackney Half Marathon - come and join us!

First Task - Homeless Shelter - written by Pritesh:

On an annoyingly cold night 10 prompt arrivers (including first time runners Laura, Gabriel and Will) set off for our penultimate visit to the American International Church, with myself and Becky leading and back-marking the group we made swift progress to the church and there met Stephanie who doled out our instructions.

Methodical approach

A slightly easier night with only 11 beds needed, we went for the methodical approach this week doing duvets and pillows first before laying out the mattresses and applying our best ‘hospital corners’ to the sheets and then getting the beds evenly spaced out before we could survey our work and fit in a quick group snap.

We then made our way to Granary Square and got ourselves involved in some exercises.

Second Task - Skip Garden - written by Polly and Paul:

Our second task of the evening was to Skip Garden, a project which aims to connect people to each other and the natural world by creating hands-on and reflective opportunities. Today we were tasked with turning the compost machine to keep the garden green and fed. We split into two teams of 8, one led by Lucia and the other led by Polly. The latter wrote the following task report:

Kept warm with a duvet, the mechanical composter likes to be fed a mix of "browns and greens" (wood chip pellets and garden waste). It had only been fed greens recently and had got a bit bunged up.

Browns and Greens

Chief Gnome, Paul, tasked us with turning a big handle on its side which activates a big cork screw, mulch​ing up all the ingredients inside. A bucket at its bottom collect​ed the compost cocktail. This cocktail is then fed back into the​ ​machine with pellets. This must be repeated until it poops out nice brown compost. Lovely.

Liz afterwards said pushing that lever around for the compost machine was like flying around like a hamster!

While Team Polly got to work Paul led the rest of the group to a local square and benches to do some conditioning exercises and intervals. Firstly we started off with some step exercises to strengthen our glutes and legs, then we did an interval session to build fitness and then we did triceps dips and squats for further conditioning.

Then the teams switched and repeated the above. With the arrival of the Task One team we were all collected together for the first time, said goodbye to Paul from Skip Garden and headed to the canal for either a 3 or 5km run.

Next week there'll be two tasks again, it will be the last time we are going to the homeless shelter for the winter season and another group will be off to Camden Foodbank, Simon the Islington Trainer will be leading.

See you in two weeks - enjoy!

PB out.

Wow, an amazing 31 Goodgymers met on a cold February evening to tackle two tasks and run 5km.

Good news all around, well done Jess Cowan for her 1hr 44 Richmond Half Marathon at the weekend and Francis Powrie for heading 50 good deeds!

After an active and well observed warm up we headed to our tasks.

Alara Run Report:

Group 1 led by Paul and backmarked by Frances headed to Alara which is a wholefoods project which makes lovely products, including muesli and granola! They also manage and maintain Kings Cross Orchard Project. Our tasks were simply splitting into three groups and weeding around the various orchards to keep them protected, we filled 10 buckets full of weeds.

Mmmmm Yacon!

Due to our hard work we were very happy to collect a box of Yacon Granola each. Yacon is a species of perennial daisy traditionally grown in the northern and central Andes from Colombia to northern Argentina for its crisp, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots. Alara grows the only Yacon plants in the UK - wow! With our boxes in hand we headed off to meet Becky's group.

Skip Garden Run Report written by Emily Morrissey (first time at GoodGym):

Group 2 led by Becky, and supported by Meredith and Jess headed on a short and steady run to the Skip Garden (which is a community garden with a twist - it's moveable... This sustainable urban garden really is a charming oasis with wild flowers, vegetables and herbs, beehives and chicken coops.)

Wood x Fire = Pizza

We were welcomed, shown around and introduced to all the fantastic work that takes place there. The team was then presented with a huge amount of freshly cut firewood (used for the pizza oven, fire pit and the tipi stove!) which needed moving to a more convenient location. Two groups loaded and pushed the trolleys and one group re-stacked the wood, lasting about 20 minutes.

Progressive Running

After smashing both tasks we met at Granary Square to do some progressive running. Splitting into two groups the aim was to progressively get faster on each corner of the square, this training is regularly used by Kenyan Runners to develop their pacing.

Lucia (LG) Gobbi looked very involved - just look at her face - see photo above.

Just look at that face!

Everyone did 2 laps and 6 more brave soles did a 3rd lap - corrrrrr nice one!

We all jogged back to Somers Town together and had a nice stretch before heading to the pub and/or home.

Next Saturday we are off to Kentish Town City Farm, it's a starter session but everyone is welcome.

In April we are heading to Regents Park 10k - join us!

See you next week.