21 GoodGymers assembled on a very hot evening and ran 5k and 10k respectively to pick litter in the local park and deliver leaflets for Abbey Community Centre

We welcomed Arnulfo and Giedre along to their first ever GoodGym! Nice to meet you guys!

In the news this week:

• Well done to Steve Coman who has now done 150 good deeds - wow!
• Amazing work to Ben who smashed the 200 km Dunwich Dynamo Ride last weekend!
• We are starting to get signed up for Cardiff Half Marathon on 2 October, Pritesh is in charge, it's gonna be good one!
• Also don't forgot about the GoodGym 4x1 Mile Relay: London Athletics Community Games 2016 on Sunday 7 August, it's only £2.50 to enter and for a bit extra you can do the shot-put and long jump as well!

We had two tasks for the evening:

• Delivering leaflets for Abbey Community Centre about their amazing services (10km overall).
• Litter picking in the local park, making Camden a cleaner and safer place (4-5km overall).

Litter Pick Run Report:

A group of 14 amazing GoodGymers went around the corner to the local park to pick litter, this is always important to do, particularly in the summer when children are more likely to play in the green spaces.

Interesting items!

We split into three groups and for 15 minutes smashed through the litter picking, finding various items - a shoe, a bike wheel, most of Camden's cigarettes, a bike glove and a sandwich! It was like constructing someone's life.

We packed up, took a quality group picture and headed back to base to do some warm up exercises - opening the gate and closing the gate - countryside rules and good dynamic stretches!

Posture

Our technical point for the evening was posture, it's very important to have a straight back at all times when running and in life, not leaning forward or back is key! We ran in a tight group to Regents Park remembering the importance of our posture!

On arrival in Regents Park we were lucky enough to find some shaded space between the BBQers, softball teams and sunbathers. To have good POSTURE requires excellent balance so we played a fun high knees game, testing our balance and comparing the different legs. In the rest stops between the games we learnt some balancing stretches to do at home, these will strengthen your trunk area - making you a stronger runner!

High Knees Game

Just before we headed home we did a quick fire relay around the water fountain - corrrr nice arms and posture guys - speedy!

Abbey Community Centre report by Pritesh:

On a hot hot evening in Camden seven of us decided that we weren’t going to be bothered by the heat and took the long option up to Abbey Community Centre. We kept up a strong pace on the way there and made it in half an hour despite the killer of Primrose Hill. We were met by Laura from the community centre who had water ready for us which was much needed on a night like this!

Hot hot hot

The task in hand was to do some leafleting in the local area to highlight the over 50s activities that take place at the centre. Laura outlined the areas that we were to cover and we split into two groups and headed off for a 25 minute blast to get as many leaflets out as possible!

Woof Woof

With only one barking dog encountered, one member of the public interested in goodgym spoken to and many many leaflets distributed we were back to the centre to have a final gulp of water before we made our way back! A quick group photo and then we took a final few leaflets so we could hit the local houses on the run back and then we were up to speed to get back. We again had a good pace heading back and were back in time to join the stretches with the other group!

During the stretches we had a quick spot prize with ice creams handed out to our two new runners - well done for coming out on such a hot night!

We'll see you next week, we are painting and gardening!

Cheers PB

P.s. Thanks for the card for my coaching qualification, very happy to run with you guys every week!