4 Good gym-mers , plus 2 mini good gym-mers trialled, for the first time, the Slow Ways walking route from Streatham to Tooting. The walk was along some smaller residential roads and some bigger roads too. Some accessibility improvements could be made for pushchair access in the underpass however it does pass a great cafe for coffee and pastries and is a nice route for a quick access to tooting.

Hello Lambeth!

THIRTY THREE of you amazing people joined me in Lambeth last night as we helped two organisations, ran a combined 236km, gave out a shit prize and unfortunately failed again to produce cake!

In the news this week:

• A big Lambeth welcome to Hannah who joined us for her first GoodGym run.
• Hearty congratulations to artist extraordinaire Tim for winning shit prize of the month for his dedication in both running and drawing and for generally being an all round awesome bloke.
• Don’t forget the GoodGym-wide social is next Thursday in Angel and if you’re a Libra then this is the social for you!
• Fancy volunteering at a race – check out the Shoreditch 10k on the 14th October – perks included!

And finally a big thank you to the TaskForce and to everyone for helping me out and being such a great crowd to lead and run with! On to the night:

We had two tasks – revisiting the work at Clapham Common for Colour your Common and heading up to St Michael’s Fellowship to sort through some charitable donations.

Thank you to Tom, Nicky and Vix who were in charge of the St Michael's Fellowship group. Words from Tom:

We ran 4km up Streatham Hill to help St. Michael’s Fellowship. An amazing charity who work to break cycles of disadvantage so that children may lead more healthy and confident lives.

We were met by the lovely Hillary and team. Who informed us that our task was to sort donations of all shapes and sizes of baby clothes into seasonably appropriate packages for Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter wear.

This required a great deal of curation and attention to detail from the team. With lots of spirited debate over colour clashes, gendered onesies and whether it’s ever appropriate to wear socks with sandals.

With so many donations to sort through, the scale of the task was too much for one night’s work. But we hope to return soon in some form to help with the great work St. Michael’s are doing.

The rest of us headed up to Clapham Common, a shorter run but a much more physical task. Thanks to Frances, George, Jim and John for guidance and back-marking. Here’s our report:

Wanting to avoid the traffic of Clapham High Street we headed on a slightly different route but ably led by Frances, George and Jim we made our way to the common with no problems. There we were greeted with much darkness and also Adrian and David who were getting out various tools for the task. We split in to two groups, ‘Turfers’ and ‘Turners’. The Turfers worked on a specific area cutting the turf from the soil. A precise and tough job given the ground was still very firm. The Turners worked on an area that had previously been removed of turf and slowly but surely turned and broke up the soil working carefully to ensure that the ground they turned wasn’t trodden on or compacted. With various lights and headtorches being used it made for quite the eerie scene. After 25 minutes hard work it was time to go, I think packing up may have been the hardest part of the night particularly the travails of the wheelbarrow with a flat tyre! In any case all was put away and all that was left was for us to run back to Papa’s!

Thank you to Frances who led the stretch at the end of the evening and thanks again to everyone for a wonderful night in Lambeth - I’ll be sure to come back if I get the chance! Katie is back next week so do sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh

We had two lovely runs this evening, one was back to the historic Brixton Windmill. Tucked away off Brixton Hill, lots of people don't even know this windmill exists but it does and it is a great place of learning, surrounded by a peaceful garden. Beth led a group on a 1km route to the mill, whilst those wanting a longer run took the 4km Tom Benson run bus.

Here's what Beth had to say:

For those of us that took the direct route up Brixton Hill there was some chat on the way there about how few of us knew that Brixton had it’s own fully functioning windmill. On arrival we were a little disappointed to see that the sails had been taken off the windmill but once they are repaired they’ll be back on and it will be looking more functional again soon. Jean handed out tools and showed us what needed doing. A large group neatened up the edge of the path, a group of three started digging a spot for a new tree and there was also trimming of some overgrown plants to be done. Once the reinforcements arrived in the shape of Tom’s long run group there was even more digging going on and plenty of sweeping and bagging up of weeds.

The rest of us went 2km up to the Tulse Hill Estate. Hidden amongst the buildings is an incredible polytunnel that serves as an educational food growing project for the whole estate. Over the summer, hundreds of tomato plants were cultivated and given out to residents to grow on their balconies. The project gets lots of reclaimed wood that is used to make pallet beds for growing but at the moment it was all piled up next to some garages. Presenting a fire risk, it needed to be moved so we squeezed into the small space and started pulling them out and taking them to a safer space. The pile was quite big and there were bits of timber, old fence and even a fireguard that we pulled out of the way. It was a fantastic effort made all the better by not scratching the very nice VW Golf parked precariously near to the work area.

On arrival back to base, we tucked into some Bake Off treats from Tess and Sarah. It was all delicious and we headed off home happy.

Our original task of Vauxhall Foodbank had been postponed so Lambeth runners were treated to a trio of lovely tasks. The first group was led by Issy and it was an 8km round trip up to the Portico. There were lots of bits to move around and some containers of water to be emptied out, which are used as weights for the West Norwood Feast gazebos.

The second group went 1km each way to Loughborough Farm. There was a garden shed that needed squeezing past a big digger and taking out of the farm and over the road to a new orchard that is going to be planted there. The team managed it with some finesse.

The third group stayed at our home, Papa's and gave it a right old tidy up. We got rid of broken old toys and did some excellent pruning along the fence. A tree that was sprouting tiny new trees from it's roots got cut right back. Everyone was delighted.

We did some running games and some stretches and that was that.

After weeks and weeks of scorchio last night saw the weather break and a bit of rain happened. This was somewhat ironic as one of our tasks was helping our pals on Clapham Common to water the wildflower meadow that we planted in the spring. After a serious amount of back and forth with watering cans, the heavens opened last night and the lovely pitter patter of refreshing H20 could be heard falling from the sky. OH WELL.

Before all that though, we welcomed back Vicki - HI VICKI - who is visiting from Oz for a bit and it was lovely to have her back. We also celebrated the brilliant Emma and Jim, who earned their 50 and 100 t-shirts respectively. WELL DONE GUYS!

After a quick warm up we split into two groups. Jim and Beth led one group about 1.5km to Larkhall park:

11 of us took a leisurely jog over to Larkhall Park to meet Carl. He had a lot of weeds that needed pulling up and was grateful that we would have them out before the rain came and they would be reinvigorated and take over even more. We split into two groups - Team Weed and Team Thistle. There were noticeably different approaches in the two groups, Team Weed went with a ‘bend at the hip, bums in the air’ vibe while Team Thistle crouched down and really got on the same level as their targets. After half an hour or so the area was looking much better and we set off on an even more leisurely jog back to Papa’s.

The rest of us headed to the aforementioned Clapham Common to do some solid watering. The plants were so dry that we certainly did some good and the rain that came later can only help the lovely plants on their way to perennial glory.

Nice work GoodGym!

It was another lovely summer's evening and we welcomed Saul, trainer for soon to be opening Huddersfield, along for his first ever GoodGym run! As the last Tuesday in July, it was time to award our Shit Prize of the Month to another deserving winner. This month it went to Mark, who bagged himself a 10km PB in the stonking heat at the British 10km and for making such a great contribution at the Shindig earlier in the month. WELL DONE MARK!

JKB led one group across to Myatt's Field, where they set about unwinding some pesky bindweed around the nature garden. Once a satisfying pile of the pesky weed was accumulated, they did some paired running around the circular park path. Once you meet each other, you high five, turn around and run back the way you came. If you're both keeping a steady pace, both runners should arrive back at the same time.

Katie led the second group up to the lovely Ruskin Community garden. Justin was very delighted that we were all there and we set about clearing two beds from weeds and turning the soil as well as spreading some compost on another bed. We also learned the difference between a mattock and a hoe - which was very exciting. After that we did a pyramid hill session before heading back to base.

When all the runners were back from doing so much good, we celebrated GoodGym's 100,000th good deed with a banner and some photos. Well done Lambeth - you have made such a big contribution to this number and long may it continue!

It was a most lovely summers evening and lots of new runners plus some regulars too were all gathered at Papa's Park. We were ready to do some running and also to help out our community at the same time.

We celebrated Sylvie's 50th good deed with party poppers and then headed off for a warm up. We did a nice 'getting to know you' round where people had a good chat and made new friends. Then we were off down Brixton Road to the lovely Kennington park. Our last visit to the park helped them regain their Green Flag status so we all felt happy and a bit smug about that. There's never time off in this park though, oh no!

The bindweed needed some serious un-binding, the roses needed dead heading - luckily our petal-identifier in Chief Lucy was there to point out what was a leaf and what was a petal and what was alive and what was dead and therefore needed heading.

This is a petal! Said Lucy very helpfully

Rebecca and Kiro took to giving the shrubbery a haircut and we can all thank Kiro's mum for giving him a lesson in not leaving the cuttings on top as they go all brown and look ugly.

A crack team of litter pickers filled many bags with all kinds of wonder, including some bubble blowers, a party horn and a driver's license next to a particularly large and empty bottle of vodka.

It's a much more sophisticated drinker in the park these days, mused Steve as he collected thrown away craft beer cans

Some others watered the trees that were in need of a big drink. It was all a big effort and we got lots done.

With that we headed over to a leafy area and did some walk out planks before heading back to base for some stretches. Thanks Lambeth!