Tonight we ran over 7.5km to weed the sunken gardens at Grangewood Park.

This morning we all awoke to the sound of the rain hammering down and grey skies. A few enquiries were made about whether there would be a GoodGym run or not and of course the answer was YES. Rain just makes us hardcore runners so well done to all those who braved the damp evening to come out.

We headed off from Solutions to Grangewood Park near Thornton Heath. It was a fairly flat route until we arrived at the park and then discovered the hill that took us to the sunken garden. Still, as we powered up the hill we kept in mind that hills make us stronger and are our friends!! Once we arrived at the garden we met Andrea from the Friends of Grangewood Park and helped her with some weeding and tidying before it is restored. Although we didn’t have much time to see all of Grangewood Park we were all amazed at how beautiful and green it was and it was amazing to think we were in the middle of south London. Well worth a visit,

Today we were joined by 4 new members to Croydon GoodGym: Thandi who has never run before and did so well on her first attempt (hope the lavender helps you sleep tonight), Rachel and Steven who are regular runners but had never come along to a GoodGym session and finally Lauren who is a GoodGym veteran with over 70 good deeds to her name and has moved from north to south London so will hopefully be regular here too. Welcome to you all and hope to see you back again. Ivo, GoodGym’s founder, also came along and was able to pass on some ideas about how to make the run both fun and challenging. It was lovely to see some regular runners too – must mean you’re enjoying it so far!

Don’t forget that it’s National Volunteer week next week and there’s a Starter session organised for Saturday 4th of June at 11am. Please give friends and family a little nudge to sign up and come along too if you can.

Next week we will be litter picking in central Croydon while the Pearl Izumi Tour series (cycling) is happening in Croydon so we’ll get the best of all worlds; a run, some drills, a good deed and a chance to watch some super speedy cyclists in lycra. We will finish at our normal time of 8.30pm which will give you enough time to head back if you want to see the final laps and see the winning cyclists.