This week's group run at GoodGym Southwark had the pleasure of hosting ten GoodGymers including first-timer: Benjamin, who literally joined the day before. With the newbie around, Sam went through his traditional GoodGym speech and gave updates of what is happening over the weekend and the distant future!

Knowing we had limited time, we blasted through a one minute warm-up before answering our ice-breaker question, which was: What meal would you cook for your Valentine's date?

We had answers from brownies (slutty and regular ones) to plain salmon and from veggie lasagna (and other "pasta based dish") to a badly made calzone....in the end, it's the thought and love put into it that counts 😉

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Slutty Brownies & Bindweeds

Sam informed everyone that tonight's task at Thorlands would be limited to 30 minutes as the task owner, Simon, had to rush over to a budget meeting. Thus, we sprinted into the night until we paced ourselves slowly up Chadwick Road (the long incline road) to the top of Grove Hill and then down towards Denmark Hill station and beyond King's College Hospital. Simon was waiting for us with all the tools out apart from the bigger tools (shovels and forks), which Lindy and Katy obtained.

Our task tonight was two-fold: tackle the corner area that everyone leaves and cut down the "dead" bindweed from the fence near the "Walled" garden of Thorlands. Claire and Lucy took on that latter task. They were armed with secateurs, a lopper and a bin liner to fill the bindweed with....however, they realised quite soon that there was more bindweed than there was space for it in the bin. Therefore, they changed tactics to fill the bin liner with leftover/blown in litter and dumped the bindweed in a tonne bag. The rest of the team: Benjamin, Emma, Hollie, Katy, Lindy, Sophie and Vic concentrated on digging out any "greens" from the corner area of the "Forest" garden. They used shovels/shades, a fork and trowels to get as much as they could out whilst wheelbarrowing it to the compost heap! 💪

30 minutes in GoodGym world feels like 10 minutes as next thing Sam knew it was time to start the five minute countdown as we had to ensure there was five minutes at the end for cleaning the tools!

The team were on 🔥 for the last couple of minutes of digging and trimming as they wanted to get as much done! Yet, what doesn't get done will get done on Saturday.

After oiling up the secateurs and lopper as well as cleaning the larger tools in the murky and muddy water with an old rag, we said our goodbyes to Simon and to half of the team as most ran from Thorlands back home instead of heading back to Peckham. Still, there were some hardy bunch left. ❤️‍ Benjamin, Claire, Emma, Hollie and Sophie joined Sam for the run back to Peckham via Champion Hill and East Dulwich backstreets. There was even a final sprint to the end before some deserved stretches! 🙌

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight to run up Grove Hill again and those who ran back...taking a longer route to Peckham! Thanks for getting stuck into the task as we had limited time. Thanks to Benjamin, Claire, Hollie for grabbing a drink after the run - good to catch-up despite it not being our regular social night!

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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 allowing us to help out even though our time was limited. We push on to make Thorlands Community Garden a reality!