23 GoodGymers helped Skip Garden, ran 5km & did our monthly time trial

Thanks all for coming along, another brilliant evening! Welcome to Gabrielle whose first time it was at Goodgym.

In the news this week:

• There will be a GoodGym Christmas party on Friday 9th December at Battersea Art Centre. Sign up here.
• GG Camden led by the wonderful Jess will be taking on Regents Park 10km on 4th December, sign up it's gonna be a good one!
• Next Thursday will be GoodGym monthly drinks, hopefully somewhere east but TBC. More news on it this week.

After an active warm up, including opening and closing the 'Camdenside' gate, we ran 1km to Skip Garden.

We met Chief Gnome Paul who told all about Skip Garden, the charity Global Generation who run it, and the amazing developments that have happened over the years.

Great Wall of Camden

I took 10 people off on a fitness session of hill sprints and intervals while Frances led the task and wrote the following:

12 or so of us stayed at Skip Garden to help with a few different tasks. We provided some heavy lifting power, moving various bits and pieces that were no longer needed into a skip. We moved some tables around. And we all had a turn at working the ridan composting machine!

Smelly ridan!

The ridan is a big cylinder, you stick food waste into it with a bit of wood chip, turn the handle, and it “poos” compost out the other side. Sadly it was a bit bunged up this time around, which meant a hard job trying to turn the handle. However it was a good workout for the arms and we managed to produce some compost between us before we swapped over with the other half of the group.

We switched the groups around; turned that compost machine and powered up those hills!

Arms are important!

With the tasks done we all collected together and headed to Granary Square for an arm technical session, here are some key points to remember:

• Arms are as a important as legs when running
• Arms should be driven back at a 90 degree angle
• Open chest with no cross over with the arms

We did out socket-to-pocket session in pairs and then some gentle jogging and faster pace running focusing all around those arms!

Time trial

We headed to our time trial positions, 5 times around Granary Square as quick as you want/can! Everyone did amazingly and Ben defended his title finishing in 2.33 - a new world record!

After all that excitement we jogged home and stretched those muscle fibres and headed to the pub for some well deserved food and drink.

Next week Polly and Pritesh will be in charge and you'll be off to help Terrence Higgins Trust pack 2000 condoms! Sign up here.

I'll see you in a few weeks or at drinks, enjoy!

PB out.