30 Goodgymers ran 4-6km to help Cecil Sharp House and Story Garden!

Welcome along to newbies Ashley, and. - great to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. A huge well done to Katie Roberts for hiting 50 good deeds last night - amazing work in a year and a half!
2. Also fantastic work to Alex Coyle who hit 100 Good Deeds last night, he's ran with Goodgym for two and a half years!
3. Community Missions this weekend helping SPCA on Saturday and CREOS on Sunday.

Story Garden Report by Liz:

Frances led a team of 8 runners to Story garden, where they split into two teams for a super short garden blitz.

One team spread endless amount of wood chip (bizarrely containing several golf balls), while the other team filled some planters with soil for a community garden space. Small children helped out both teams, but as they'd already been listed as a potential hazard in the safety briefing, no one got hurt.

Afterwards, Frances led part of the group on a 4km run around Granary Square and Liz took the remainder on a walking tour that mostly consisted of playing with a semaphore-based art installation (they were thrown off it by a small child, also eager to play).

Double Task. Double Good!

Cecil Sharp House Report:

22 of us headed to help Cecil Sharp House, the home of English Folk Song and Dance. We ran for just less than 2k other meet Susannah who explained about all the amazing permaculture gardens and charity work that goes across the site.

She split us into in the following groups:

• Hiren and Jay watered the plants with hoses in the front and back gardens. Those plants need a drink!
• A team of seven weeded and cleared the car park and shed area.
• Everyone else was spread across the back garden sweeping up, scrapping between the cracks and weeding.
• Different people took turns to aerate the walled garden lawn - including Ashley, Jay and Rob!

Getting between the new security locked doors was interesting, but we managed (no one was left behind). Over 35 minutes we got tons done, making Susannah very happy! We took a group picture and then headed to Primrose Hill - we learnt how to run up and down hill:

• Up - straight back, driving the arms back (not crossing over) and driving the knees up higher than normal.
• Down - leaning forwards, arms out to the side for balance and stepping more than normal.

We then ran back to base, to stretch and go to the pub.

Sign up for next week here, Frances will be leading the group and you'll be off to Scope Charity Shop.

PB out

*28 Goodgymers ran 4-11.5k to help SPCA and St Mungos! *

Welcome along to newbies Emily, Ellie, Catherine and Ellie - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. There are Community Missions helping Somers Town Community Festival next Saturday - details here and here!
2. It's the Night of the PB's this Saturday at Hampstead Heath!
3. Monthly Social today in Kilburn from 6.30pm; go along and have fun! Full details here.

St Mungo's Long Run:

Fourteen brave GoodGymers volunteered for GG Camden's longest run ever! I did the intro early and rather fast (Steve said it was my best ever haha) so we had more time to get over to West Hampstead. We set off on an adventure, up past Cecil Sharp House, around the side of Primrose Hill, over to Swiss Cottage and then up Finchley (lands that I've never been before). We kept a really good pace and everyone did brilliantly.

Perfect amount of task

We arrived and met Janice who gave us gloves, bin bags and water. Our task was to weed and clear the entire back garden. It was overgrown and clearly unused by the residents of the St Mungo's hostel. This fantastic homeless charity helps house and support people from across the community. Our help will mean they can now use the the garden and perhaps even plant some flowers/veg.

Over 20 minutes we made piles and piles of weeds, debris and dead plants. People took in turns to empty bin bags in the green recycling bin out front. In no time at all we were finished, group photo done and then we headed back home along the same route.

Leafleting task for SPCA:

Fifteen awesome GoodGymers, led by Frances, went to leaflet for the fantastic St Pancras Community Association (SPCA). We've helped these guys lots before with Christmas decorations, dancing and even a core class! This time we were leafleting over 400 flyers for their Community Festival which is happening in late July - nice!

Greece Lighting!

The group first ran 1km to the centre, collected the leaflets from Nicola and then split into groups of 4-5 to deliver them across the designated areas in Camden. After successfully delivering all of the leaflets the team collected together and headed to Granary Square along the canal, where they suitably got distracted by Greece showing on the big Wimbledon Screen (fair enough guys)

Another brilliant night of GoodGym, sign up for next week's run here when we'll be helping Story Garden!

PB out

24 Goodgymers ran 4km to help the Story Garden lift tons!

Thanks for coming along, no newbies but lots of regulars and recent joiners :)

In the news this week:

1. Go along to the Community Mission today helping Camden Helpline - see details here.
2. Sign up for the GG Olympics here, you haven't got long to enter your events to represent #TeamCamden
3. Also people are going to do the Scottish Half Marathon in September, see full details here.

Well what a night, we were back at the new task - Story Garden - a community garden that is currently under construction. It's changed so much in a week and will keep on changing over the the next year, it opens as part of the Somers Town Community Festival in July and then Skip Garden will move over to the site in October.

Martina gave us two tasks last night:

• Moving those huge Oak sleepers (big planks of woods) - these will be used to make 10 planters which community projects will adopt to look after.
• Shifting through soil and stones to find large stones (not concrete) which will be used to make paths - kinda looked like we were preparing to make a Roman Road.

As described by Thomas shifting the oak sleepers was some of the hardest work we've done at GoodGym Camden - lots of heavy lifting! Involving 2 or 3 people lifting each one (unless your Hanry). Over 30 mlinutes we moved at least 60 of them. Caz described all this rubble and wood lifting as quite a biblical task, a short time after that the heavens opened and rain descended upon us.... Luckily we were running by this point and it didn't get too heavy.

We did a nice 3.5k loop + the 800m time trial at Granary Square - lovely! After a slight early finish we stretched and headed to the pub.

Next week we are helping Antrim Allotments (6k overall) - sign up here.

PB out

28 GoodGymers ran 4-8k to help St Christopher's Place and St Mungo's!

Thanks for coming along guys! The GG Monthly Social is tonight in Old Street at the Prince Arthur from 6.30pm - sign up here.

I'm sad to say I will be leaving my role as Camden Trainer in August, I'm going to be moving to Sheffield to do a Masters. I'll miss you all very much and of course we'll have a leaving party!

St Mungo's Report:

Eleven of us headed of to help a new task up near Swiss Cottage - St Mungo's! This is a fantastic homeless charity that has sites all over the London and the UK. We had a lovely run up there, avoiding Primrose Hill and passing some big houses. Upon our arrival Kat and Will met us to make our group thirteen!

Our task was simple but effective to clear all and any weeds in four parts of the garden, open up the back garden as it was heavily outgrown and bag up any dead plants that were already piled up. Splitting into two's, three's and four's we got to work and made a huge impact in 20 minutes - Abi said it was the hardest she'd ever worked at GoodGym - nice!

Overall we collected up 17 bags of weeds, debris and rubbish - well done! After a group picture we headed home via Primrose Hill for the view and lesson of running downhill - all the fun.

Poo Hand Kate

St Christopher's Report:

The other group went to St. Christopher's where they pulled up weeds (assisted by "the weed lady" and a small child), cut down a sapling that had pretensions of being a tree, and swept/cleaned the area. Katie unfortunately seems to put her hand in cat poo, and then proceeded to do the run after with her hand stretched out to one side trying not to hit anyone haha.

This was the first time we went to help this task for over a year, they are connected to Camden's Origin Housing consortium and always appreciate our help. After the task was completed Frances led a 3.5k run via the canal and Granary Square to home.

Sign up for next week here when we'll be helping Cecil Sharp House and another task (tbc).

PB out.

25 Goodgymers ran 4km to help Scope Charity Shop sort donations, price tag, clean and more!

Welcome along to Mary whose first time it was last night - woop woop!

In the news this week:

1. Well done to all the Goodgymers who raced over the bank holiday weekend, at Edinburgh Marathon Festival, London 10k and elsewhere.
2. Particularly well done to Steve Coman who did a 3.49 marathon in Edinburgh and won his Age Category!
3. Night of the PB's - one of the best evenings of free live track running in the country is on Saturday 6th July - go along. We are looking for volunteers on top of spectators - more info here.
4. Well done to Liz who recently hit 100 missions. All in a year - hero!
5. GG Monthly Social next Thursday - in Central London. More details to follow!

After a thorough warm up we headed the 1km to Scope Charity Shop. Helen, the manager, was as organised as ever with a list of tasks to do and the amount of people needed for each task. This included:

• Hiren and Denis did a stock check
• Tom and John measured and labeled trousers
• Katherine and Chris did a thorough job of cleaning the shop
• A big team in the back room sorted new donations and price tagging
• Sorting cubs - Ian was cubeman!
• Pippa did some data protection based ripping and binning
• Another big team in the middle room labeled new clothes and colour disc system
• Catriona and Beth hoovered and cleaned the upstairs, kitchen and toilet

Over 45 minutes everyone did a fantastic job helping the charity shop and making a real impact. We unfortunately discovered an extremely scary doll and Pritesh wore a strange jacket. Equally scary!

After finishing up our jobs we headed to the canal, Granary Square and home to the pub.

Sign up for next week here, task tbc.

PB out