51 absolute heroes were out last night to start the year with a bang 💥

And some of those heroes were totally fresh to GoodGym! Massive cheer to Molly, Lawrence, Charlotte, Lara, Clare, Kirsty, Campbell, Jasmine, Faris, Mitch and Jessica. So great to have you along :)

Our task was simple - give Lambeth council a hand by picking up some of the trees from the roadside (they don’t have enough space for all of them in their van when they pick them up) so that they’re not clogging up the streets - and take them to the TREE-CYCLING (😅) plant in Clapham Common.

And after a quick warm up, we split into 5 fabulous teams heading to different areas to pick up as many trees as we could.

After worrying that we wouldn’t find any, we were blessed with absolutely loads - some on the pavements, some hiding behind bins, some small, some massive and some so dead they must've spent their Christmas getting intimate with a radiator.

Trees in hands, we all descended on the centre of Clapham Common like some sort of weird tree cult. Each tree was ceremoniously thrown on top of a big pile and then we ran back to base with plenty of bonus FITNESS DRILLS thrown in.

TREE-MENDOUS

Amazing stuff everyone and such bravery shown when awkwardly carrying trees through some very crowded areas...

Next week is Lambeth’s 6th Birthday!! To celebrate we’re going to Jubilee Primary School to do some GOOD. Then we’re going to the pub to eat cake. 🙌 Sign up here.

30 excellent GoodGymmers met at Papa's Park on a particularly chilly Tuesday evening for this week's group run.

First of all, we welcomed two lovely new runners Harriet and Nick.

We then heard about some upcoming GoodGym events to get involved with:

• A fun community mission at the O2 in Greenwich supporting the Rainbow Trust charity this Saturday morning/early afternoon.
• A Dulwich parkrun takeover with our friends from GoodGym Southwark on Saturday 23rd November.
• The monthly GoodGym Lambeth parkrun and brunch social at Brockwell Park on Saturday 30th November.
• Pub after the GoodGym Lambeth group run next Tuesday 19th November.

Back to tonight, Victoria led an excellent warm-up that involved herding the chickens (as all good warm ups should).

Next, Freyja and Tim led a small-but-perfectly-formed team to complete our flyering for the brilliant Repowering who are installing solar panels in two local primary schools and encouraging local people to invest in shares to tackle climate change and benefit the community - LOVELY STUFF. They blitzed this super speedily and even had time to run an extra loop on their way back to base - what a group of heroes.

Meanwhile, the rest of us headed up the hill to a NEW TASK at GLOWS - a community co-working space. Sam and I led a direct party pace route while Victoria and Phil led a longer route. We arrived and met the lovely Magdelena who explained with great amusement that they had mistaken the choir who met there for us - WHOOPS!!! Once we had clarified that we were the runners, we got down to work moving some big tables with some lovely background music from said choir, including local classics such as Lambeth Walk and some festive favourites to get us in that Christmassy spirit. Whilst half the group shifted some HUGE tables, the other half did some FITNESS, making sure we kept warm in the chilly night air. And then we swapped, so everyone got to do some lifting and some fitness. Because that's what GoodGym is all about.

Heading down the hill back to base, the two task groups merged smoothly together, as if by magic. After some final stretches, we enjoyed MORE CAKE (definitely not stringing this whole Bake Off thing out, honest...), courtesy of Aislin (EXCELLENTLY chocolatey chocolate cake) and me (Yorkshire parkin because, well, Yorkshire, obviously).

Thank you everyone, BRILLIANT WORK. Join us next week for some more good deeds with the lovely John, what may be the last week of Bake Off cake, and PUB NIGHT (and you wouldn't want to miss that).

What a wild night of painting the town GoodGym red!

This week's task involved putting up posters for Age UK's Food2You initiative. They recruit volunteer drivers to pick up an older person's weekly shop, and then take it round to them, staying for a chat while they're at it. Such a cool idea!

We started off welcoming new GG-ers Sean, Anna, Holly, Eduardo and Verity to the crew! And we then had an impromptu visit from Lambeth councillor for volunteering and previous Lambeth mayor(!) Donatus who came to say thanks for what we've done across the borough!

Then we split into 5 teams with taskforce taking the lead. Samantha took a team to West Norwood via Herne Hill. Nicky lead a group to Oval and Stockwell. George's team headed to Clapham. Team Victoria ran to Streatham and my team went through Brixton to Loughborough Junction.

We covered so much ground between us and were pleasantly surprised by how happy most places were to let us put up the posters!

On our return, we were treated to some deliciously moist beer cake (that'll be the Guinness) from Frances and some fabulously flavoursome cinnamon buns from Rebecca. 😋

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Join us next week as we head to Brixton Road Youth Centre for some classic leaf clearing and helping to sort through their lock-ups! Sign up here!