19 people ran, and helped 4 different sets of people on Wednesday night

Blimey- how do we fit it all into an hour and a half? Crazy.

It was a chilly wet December afternoon- Im not sure there was any proper sunlight all day. But that wasn't enough to put off the 19 people who rocked up at Somers Town CA for a run.

It wasn't just a run- we had 4 jobs to help with (jobs that would have taken donkeys years to complete without us). They were;

1. Clean Break Kentish Town

A ladies only group headed up to Clean Break. They support the rehabilitation of women offenders in prisons and the community. They wanted a hand sprucing up a small garden space so the users of the centre can start using it. According to Jemma this involved;

Some tremendous trowelling, heroic hoeing and sensational sweeping

Couldn't have said it better.

3. The Skip Garden

The Skip Garden in King Cross is a top project- an organic vegetable garden in old bus car park in the middle of one of the biggest development sites in Europe. Developed and built by young people, they regularly host school visits and run hands on workshops about all things green and growing.

Here's a report from Alex;

First was to move around 600 litres of soil to the main growing area (this is about a tonne, but probably heavier because it was a bit damp). Using some expert team work (as well as a pneumatic pallet lifter) we put the name “impossible” to the test, shifting all the soil in next to no time.

Then came the second task – manning the manual food waste composter. The “rocket” up in Maiden Lane is good, but for added feel good factor you can’t beat turning/mixing woodchip and foodwaste by hand. We each took it in turns on the crank handle to mix it all up, starting off confident and then soon realising how exhausting it was. Not to mention stinky. But after establishing a good bit of rotational rhythm we managed to produced three large buckets of compost (reminiscent of mechanised cow poo-ing) for Paul and his team, much to his astonishment. But not ours obviously – all in a day’s work. Impossible is nothing.

or as Steve Coman put it:

*Overall wonderful task - used a pallet truck to move 600 litres plus of soil. Great fun and described as "an impossible task" by Paul who was there. We also turned the handle on the compost making machine which turns waste food from local restaurants into compost very speedily. Thoroughly enjoyable

3. Castlehaven Community Centre Growing Project

At Castlehaven project co-ordinator Sarah asked us if we could collect the massive piles of leaves that were all over the communal space in front of the centre. These leaves would then be mulched and used as mulch by the community gardening group. We split into pairs (thanks for the tip Reece) and hit the piles of leaves hard- hovering them all into black sacks in around 30mins. I reckon we collected over 20 stuffed bags of leaves- there wasn't mulch left when we were finished.

4. Mission to Alma

Here's the mission as described by Pritesh;

Myself and Steve were on a mission tonight, although the real mission was actually just survival! We were both labouring under illness but we ignored that and headed North to our destination. After a minor hiccough on the way, some exuberant hill running meant we missed a turn, we arrived at Alma’s flat. After a rather awkward moment explaining to a PCSO that we were actually here to visit Alma and help her out (“Do you live here? Er…erm…we’re just visiting someone”), we headed up to the flat and Alma outlined the various tasks that she wanted us to help with. Steve and I got down to business and in the short time we were there we managed to clean some mildew from the bathroom ceiling that Alma couldn't reach, retune and preset her favourite radio stations on her kitchen radio, clean out the washing machine filter and get her laptop back in working order! We both would’ve liked to have stayed for longer but time was not on our side. Spurred on by Alma’s kind words we went for a hard run back and knocked out a decent 4k in 20mins! A great goodgym night!

Steve and I both felt that this task was particularly special and it’s not till you get to go on a mission run and meet people that you realise how much of a difference we make and how much impact it has on those people we run to. Alma is in her 80s and the little things that we did for her, which we would take for granted so easily, made the world of difference for her. She was incredibly grateful and complimentary about what goodgym does and how invaluable it is. Get yourself CRB checked and hopefully we can do even more to help out in the community!

Cracking Stuff youse lot