What a beautiful evening of good that was. We had 2 tasks, a bonus task, 8 tonnes of soil to move, and a huge 44 runners of which 12 had never visited GoodGym before. Big uuuup Oli, Jennifer, Chloe, Rory, Jack, Holly, Catherine B, Catherine M, Dom, Kirsty, Marie and Flavia. So great to have you along!

After a quick warm up, we split into 2 groups:

Soil Dispersion @ Spurgeon Estate Vs. Weeding and Grass Cutting at PAPA's Park

Victoria had a mighty 5 staying at base to do some gardening. Valcie, who runs PAPA's cafe had provided some delicious refreshments to say thanks (guava & mango juice with some chocolate digestives mmmm...) but first they had a run round the block, including a stop off to play the piano outside a local shop!

When they returned, they split and got working on clearing the grassy areas around the trees and getting rid of weeds. Oli didn't even want to stop!

Muchas Grass-cias

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The rest of us were headed to the Spurgeon Estate near Stockwell. They've recently been given some funds to sort out a garden area they have there and Urban Growth had made some planters. All the soil however was in bags on the other side of a fence...

So it was human conveyor belt time. And oh my the GoodGym machine is an efficient one. One team delivered the bags through a gap in the fence while another team moved them to the planters. Then Team 3 slit the bags and emptied them into the planters.

LIKE A WELL-SOILED MACHINE ⚙️

And when Nicky and George arrived with the long route runners, they kicked it up a gear, throwing bags over the fence and getting the planters filled in no time.

BONUS TASK:

There was also a pile of bricks that the residents weren't going to use, so we filled the soil bags and moved them to the road to get picked up tomorrow.

THE POWER OF GOODGYM ❤️

When we got back, we had a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (and planks and sprints...etc.) and a nice long stretch.

Next week we're double deeding again - Ruskin Park (we got given onions last time...) or flyering and painting for the awesome Brixton People's Kitchen (except this is in Vauxhall). Get signed up here. Oh, and don't forget, it's pub week so we'll stick around for a beverage after the run. 🍾

It was a delightful evening for a delightful run, with 35 runners in pursuit of the Portico Gallery, a community arts space in West Norwood.

We had a quick intro, welcoming 7 new people to the gang. Nice one Alice, Rachael, Anthony, Hannah, Sarah, Emily and Martha!!! Give those guys a cheer.

SOFIA, SO GOOD.

Then Lavinia told us about the fantastic time that was had this past weekend in Bulgaria. There were some incredible finish times from GG Lambeth runners and a lot of fun was had!

Tom Benson gave us the lowdown on the GoodGym Olympics and the plan for a GG Anthem. 🥁

And we congratulated Will on his sterling effort of reaching 50 GOOD DEEDS. Awesome stuff.

We then hit the road, a tidy 4.5k uphill to The Portico. Tom Hunter lead the “keen” bunch and the rest of us took a more relaxed approach!

We arrived to meet John who gave us a couple of tasks:

👉 Cleaning the walls of the arts space with a “sugar soap” mixture.

👉 folding plastic bags to save space

Everyone got stuck in with some people commenting on how scrubbing the walls was very therapeutic!

Soap pleased to clean you.

Before we knew it, time was up and we had to begin the descent home.

SOAP SOLID CREW.

Well done everyone. Next week we’re at Myatt’s Field for another therapeutic task - removing bindweed!

What a delightful evening for a GoodGym run. And what a fabulous turn out! 37 hardcore GoodGymers hit the pavements to help two local projects - Ruskin Community Garden, and Springfield Lodge, a Salvation Army hostel for young people.

We had 8 new runners with us this week: Nice one Fiona, Jade, Rosa, Phoebe, Tom, Caitlin, Rachael and Elinor for coming along!

We started off with a visit from Paul who smashed the London Marathon on Sunday as well as fellow GoodGym Lambeth stars Nicky and Phil! I think he tempted some of us to GET SIGNED UP.

And we heard how GG Lambeth has our Bank Holiday weekend sorted with a community mission this Saturday for the GP food coop as well as our social to sample the Brixton Windmill Bread and Beer Festival on Monday. 🍞🍻👅

We also awarded our SPOTM, which had a hair and head theme, with a shower cap, comb and white cap (complete with all-important 90's style, flip down eye-visor - you know the ones). And this went to a person, who is very new to GG Lambeth but this week completed her 4th good deed, sorted her DBS last week and has now completed all the training and become MISSION VERIFIED so she can now get signed up to help older people with one-off tasks:

Everybody give a big cheer to Laura! 👏👏👏🎈🎈🎈🎉🎉🎉

After all that, we had a quick warm up and headed off.

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Tom had this to say about his group who ran to Ruskin Community Garden:

14 runners made their way across town on a 5km round trip to Ruskin Park. After successfully resisting the temptation to join the Trapeze School in session; We met up with Justin who showed us round the community garden. Our task was to dig over a particularly wild looking over-grown patch of the garden to be used as a flower bed.

We made short work of this with the group really getting stuck into the task with some particularly satisfying hacking tools. Ably assisted by Rose heading up a wheelbarrow ferry service for all the green stuff we turned up.

Our duties even stretched to rehousing a family of newts; Who were quite friendly, despite us levelling their home in the wild patch of grass.

Sorry guys!

With our work complete we headed back against the backdrop of a very picturesque looking sunset. A perfect summer's night for GoodGym. Many more like this please!

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My group took a 6km hilly run past Denmark Hill up to Springfield Lodge. We were greeted by Rosanna, also a GoodGym runner with Southwark(!), and she quickly set us some tidying up tasks including:

Removing bindweed 🌱

Moving some huge dustbins ♻️

Clearing leaves to compost 🍂

Litterpicking 🚮

We split into teams to tackle the different areas and everybody made a massive difference to the space in such a short amount of time. Rosanna was super happy we ran back, sprinting the final section of the route from Ferndale Road which is a new STRAVA SEGMENT. Check it out 😉 and well done to Jim for being the fastest runner today (19s!).

Awesome work everyone and see you next time... ✌️