Sam was super excited for tonight's task as it was with a contact that we hadn't run to before, but helped last year once. It was a change in task (again) as the referred task had completed their task by themselves and no longer needed our help, which was a shame. Yet, it did mean a shorter run for those who came tonight.

Originally, the group run had 12 people, but it slowly whittled down to 8 people including three newbies. In the end, Abie and Az came for their first GoodGym ever! Abie had signed up on the day and was too eager to wait a whole week and decided to come - great decision as she enjoyed it immensely. Az, unfortunately, took the wrong train and arrived at the task with 20 minutes to spare, but got a sense of what GoodGym is all about and met everyone. Welcome again to the both of you!

Back at Old Spike, Abie, Daryl, Emma, Gemma and Sam waited until 18:45 before Sam proceeded with his GoodGym speech and warm-up as he knew they would be meeting Olive at the task as it was closer to her home than running to Old Spike.

After the warm-up, Sam asked the ice-breaker question, which was to do with the fact we were about to go to an Orchard: What is your favourite type of apple?

We had "Pink Lady" from Emma, Abie said "Auburn" whilst Gemma and Daryl both went for "Granny Smiths" and finally, Sam said "Golden Delicious"....which might have gone out of fashion...

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The therapy dog

A 1.4k / 8 minute run from the Old Spike lead us straight to Cecile and Olive, who were about to get the garden bins from the front of the church.

Cecile kindly introduced herself and gave a background to the church and Orchard before telling us about her friendly six year old Basset Hound (forgot her name...) - she had a bit of a bark, but was overly friendly with everyone.

Cecile had a few tasks for us and we had around 45 minutes to tackle them. Firstly, Abie, Gemma and Olive took care of the first task, which was to weed around the front of the Orchard and parking lot as it had become overgrown.

Emma had the whole second task to herself as she concentrated on de-weeding what I called the "reflection" path - the circular path that people could walk to enjoy the Orchard.

Finally, Daryl and Sam moved a empty, but heavy planter from the front to the back of the Orchard. They stapled two to three layers of black tarp/mesh to line the planter before Az appeared and took over Sam's role. What was left was to fill the planter with soil as the bed would be used to plant wildflowers. However, the soil that was re-used had loads of potatoes, which most people took home - what a treat!

The night ended with a quick "8 exercises in 8 minutes" workout before all of us apart from Olive ventured to Clock House for our monthly social, where we caught up and got to know the newbies and talk about people we don't like (amongst other things....how wholesome).

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! It was a shorter run, but one that was needed after the Big Half on Sunday! This did mean the task was longer than usual, so thank you for sticking with it and getting all three tasks done! Incredible! Great to catch up over drinks at the Clock House afterwards too.

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Thank You Cecile

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cecile who immediately said "yes" after contacting her as a last minute replacement 48 hours before. It's great that we caught you just in time before you head off to Wandsworth and I hope we can continue this relationship with St. Clement's Orchard through Leonie in the coming weeks and months.

Daryl, Gemma and Sam met up on Peckham Rye Common to help Liz and her Friends of Peckham Rye Park team set up this summer's Fete.

We had various tasks, but our first job was to take two bags of compost and fill in as many cracked holes as possible as the summer heat had exposed and cracked the soil. After this, the team moved onto putting not one, but two gazebos and a banner before their final task of the hour was putting up the netting to go around the Coconut Shy fence.

A great morning to be up and alive to enjoy the sunshine and the local traditions and festivities.

Running late from a team building day with work, Sam arrived just 2-3 minutes late after a mob of GoodGymers were ascending on Old Spike Roastery.

Sam knew half of the team were going to meet at Thorlands whilst the other half were up for a 3k run via Grove Hill.

Sam brushed through the announcements before getting on with the warm-up. Yet, Jc opted out as he literally ran and came to Old Spike Roastery as we were closing up. After everyone warmed up, our ice-breaker question for tonight was: Which villain (real or fictional / dead or alive) would you go out on a dinner date with?

Everyone was playing the cautious card by saying Disney villains such as Cruella and Ursula, but we did have Darth Vader and Lex Luther. Only Sam chose a real dead villain - Hitler.

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Stay Trenched

The 3k run took us just over 15 minutes and when we arrived, we were greeted by the sights of Mikhail, who hadn't been on a group run for at least two years as well as our regulars: Paulin, Lindy, Ed and Rebecca who opted to run, walk or cycle to the task.

After collecting the tools, we continued with where we left off on Saturday. There was more digging trenches to plant tree saplings that needed to be grounded before all the saplings dried up. The digging of the trench was left to the boys - Joao, Jc, Mikhail and Ed. However, there were other tasks at hand.

Lindy and Gemma cleared the terrace area of Buddleia. Whilst Daryl, Emma and Nathan had the task of shifting the compost heap from the Forest Garden to the Kitchen Garden as on Saturday we will be mulching that area. Paulin and Rebecca got the watering cans as the soil needed to be watered before we could plant the saplings.

Luckily, everyone had something to do and there was hardly any waiting around. The minutes flashed by with some banging tunes from Sam.

All in all, it was a successful evening and after we put back the tools and took our group photo, we headed off back home/to Old Spike Roastery.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Being tipsy after a few drinks at the team building afternoon added an extra level of concentration and added professionalism. I appreciate that this was our largest group run of the year! Simon appreciated what we could do in 30 minutes and really showing the power of GoodGym when we are in numbers (and when there's enough tools and tasks to do). Thank you again!

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Thank You Simon

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Simon for the monthly group run session. It was great that we could finish off tasks mid-week rather than wait a whole week!

🙃 This week was a slightly different group run than usual, since Sam was on holiday! - and I was left to lead my first group run...

⏳ Wanting to be extra prepared, I turned up early, but then so did everyone else! So by 6:30, everyone (apart from Emma who had already let me know that she would be meeting us at the estate) had turned up. Meanwhile Andres from Old Spike had forgotten that we would be coming (woops!), so he was busy mopping and clearing up around us. We left Old Spike to get out of Andres' way and I had the daunting task of keeping us all busy before we needed to get to Cossall Estate at 7:10.

⚽️ We did a short warm up, and followed Sam's tradition of asking a question as part of the head count. My one was a bit meta: What question would you ask if you were in my position, leading a group run?! Answers included learning languages, holiday destinations but Daryl went down a slightly different tract and he said his question would "What is the score going to be in tonight's Women's Euro match?" - very topical! After a lot of chitchat, time killing and a failed leaflet collection, we finally set off to Cossall estate.

🌿 When we arrived, we were met by Jaki, who gave us two tasks: litter picking in the nature reserve and watering the plants around the nature reserve. We split into two teams: Nelly, Daryl and Emma chose to be on litter picking duty, whilst Gemma, Olive and I went for watering.

🚽 Of the litter pickers, the most "exciting" object that was found was a toilet seat, by Nelly! All the pun credit goes to her too!

💦 The watering turned out to be a more adventurous task than expected, since the hose was broken, so we used a wheelbarrow to wheel big containers of water around instead. The speed bumps and other road furniture made the task feel a bit like a bad game show!

🙏 Thanks everyone for coming this week and being so supportive!