After everyone had an egg-cellent long weekend, nine GoodGymers were up for some running and community volunteering (with a bit of rugby 🏉....).

There were no Easter treats this week, but Sam was treated to seeing Lindy, Nelly, Emma, Beth, Paulin and Benjamin show up at the Old Spike Roastery on time as they ventured out to the alleywall to warm up. Our ice-breaker question tonight was in line with Earth Day, which is this coming Friday and Sam asked: With Earth Day coming up and climate change being a hot topic, what are you doing at a personal level to reduce your carbon footprint?

The highlight was definitely Paulin's trip to Milan soon. She's taking the train there! 🚆 Ben is making sure his family business becomes more sustainable, where they can. Other answers included buying second hand clothes (not underwear though...), cycling everywhere, litter picking, minimizing food waste by eating everything (even vegetable peels), composting at home, lighting candles instead of using electricity and in line with that, our favourite one, peeing in the dark (reducing electricity consumption). 👀

---

99 problems, but GoodGym ain't one

As we set off running from the alleyway, Sam decided to take a glance back towards the Old Spike Roastery and noticed Emma locking up her bike, so he rushed over to open up the cafe in order for her to drop her belongings. We dashed from Old Spike through East Dulwich up via Crystal Palace Road (passing Sam's flat) before reaching Dulwich Park and running across it. The 3.2k route took us 17 minutes to run as we made it to Old Alleynian Rugby Club on time to see Adam and Ian (task owner) passing a rugby ball. It was great to see Adam come for his 99th good deed!

Since Ian and Sam had planned a jam packed session, there was no time to waste as we put on our gardening gloves, chose our tools and tackled an area of scrub that we have been tackling for a few weeks' on the Sunday sessions. Tonight, our main focus was to clear and remove a fallen ivy tree and everything else around it.

Beth and Lindy armed with saws took lead on cutting the ivy tree as Adam, Benjamin and Emma used sheers to assist them. Paulin used the rake to clear the ground, but found that hard, so she changed tactic and helped with the clearing of ivy. This was aided more efficiently by Nelly using the wheelbarrow to transport the smaller trimmings as the team hacked away at this fallen tree.

Twenty five minutes flashed by and after some minor thorny scratches and incidents, we all came out of the experienced more harden. Yet, Ian was about to test our hardiness with a card based HIIT session. We were down to eight people as Benjamin had to rush off to work, so Sam had to join in. There were four stations as there are four different suits in a card game. Anytime a "Heart" card would appear from the deck, the two paired up on the "Heart" station would have to do 7 star jumps whilst the rest were continuously doing squats. The "Diamonds" had to do mountain climbers, "Spades" had to do high knees and "Clubs" had sit ups. Whenever there was a Joker card, everyone had to do 7 burpees before moving stations. In the end, Sam and Lindy had the short end of the straw and somehow ended up doing like 100 sit ups....six pack (under development)!

With about five minutes left, Ian put us through a few game based competitive passing games before the teams split between red GoodGym shirts via non-GoodGym shirts for a touch rugby game. Ian was super impressed that we got in the swing of things first time of asking with passing backwards and running forwards. The score ended up being tied.

After saying our goodbyes to Ian, we ran a detour route to get to Dawson's Hill to catch the spectacular sunset and gorgeous views of London! 😊

After taking a few photos and videos of the sunset, we ran down to Peckham Rye Common to complete the final leg of our run. We ran overtime slightly as we had to get our stretch in before making our way back to Old Spike.

Remember, we have a session at Old Alleynian Rugby Club this Sunday morning, if you would like to continue to tackle through the scrubs.

---

Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came and ran tonight! What an evening to go on a group run, it's almost like I had planned it 😜 Thank you for sticking with the program as I know I slightly went over time...but you can't complain after getting those sunset views!

---

Thank You Ian

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 Ian for putting us through our paces with his card based HIIT session and giving us the opportunity to learn some rugby too! We will be back for some more in the summer!