A whopping 35 runners trooped out of St Pancras & Somers Living Centre on Wednesday night to get out and do some good in Camden.

We had two newbies join the herd - welcome Collette and Katie - as well as TWO big celebrations of the milestone variety:

Becs (as in the Rebecca Clarke, GoodGym Media and Comms extraordinaire) reached her 50 Good Deeds milestone tonight and Laura Lambert hit 100 Good Deeds! Stop reading right now and go and give them a cheer! Well done to you both. Big milestones deserve cake baked by Liz, but more on that later.

As normal, the team split with 10 runners going with John to C4WS and the rest of the rabble coming with me to see Helen in the Camden Scope shop on the high street.

C4WS Report (by John)

A group of 11 threaded their way through the crowded streets of St Pancras and Bloomsbury, avoiding swiftly opened van doors on the way, for our 12th visit this winter to the homeless people's shelter at the American International Church. We knew the routine by now, setting up a human chain to move sheets, mattresses and other bedding from a storage area to the warm area where less fortunate Londoners can spend a night away from the streets and enjoy a hot meal in comfort. In a few minutes we achieved what would have taken an hour for the busy helpers in the church. Afterwards we jogged back to Granary Square for a fitness session: three laps round St Martin's School of Art at a steadily increasing pace, before a relaxing warm-down on the swivel chairs at Coal Drops Yard.

Scope Report

23 of us arrived to Helen's Scope shop in Camden high street, ready to get stuck in. A queue formed and our very drilled taskmaster handed out the jobs to the waiting teams. Jewellery needed sorting and pricing, mannequins needed re-dressing (by the GoodGym visual merchandising team - "Sorry if it's 'Devil Wears Prada' but I think we need a belt here."), shoes needed polishing, donations needed sorted (and steaming) and the upstairs office needed an early spring clean. So many jobs and so little time, but we managed to do them all and boy did that place shine as we left.

By the time both teams got back to base, it was time for blondies and fudge (both made my the inimitable Liz!) to celebrate the two big Good Deed milestones. Liz's recipe for the delicious blondies are at the bottom of the report if you'd like to try at home.

NEXT TIME

COMMUNITY MISSIONS AHOY: There's not one but TWO plogging Community Missions today - one at 1pm at Red Lion Square Gardens and the other is Glebelands Wood Nature Reserve from 4:45-5:20pm! Let's beat Lambeth to be the top scoring London GoodGym in the January Challenge. We can do it!

NEXT GROUP RUN: It's official, we're going back to Alara Wholefoods and there'll be a box of granola in it for every runner after you've helped shift some manure, tidy up the pond and do some weeding. A smaller group of us will be heading back to C4WS to make the beds again. It's going to be a brilliant night whichever task you choose.

Liz's Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies:

Ingredients

125 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

100 g butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

150 g crunchy peanut butter

175 g light brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

100 g white chocolate, chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas 3. Butter the sides of a 20 x 20cm square cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper.

2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a small bowl and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and peanut butter together until very soft. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined. Add the flour, baking powder and the chopped chocolate and mix to form a dough.

4. Place the dough into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes, or until golden brown and almost firm in the centre.

5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin, before removing and cutting into squares.

6. Eat!

35 runners came out in style for GoodGym Camden this week, as we come to the end of a really strong month for attendance!

We had not one, not two but THREE new runners with us tonight - welcome Charley, Michelle and Emily! Hope to see you all back with us very soon!

There was also another cause for celebration (even this was the third time actually celebrating it!); Camden's Sally hit 200 GOOD DEEDS! A huuuuge achievement and one to really cheer her about here! All those hours put to great use for the community; very well done indeed.

Liz had spent a lot time on putting together the most amazing red cape (from scratch!), complete with the GG logo and VELCRO Good Deed numbers (so they can be interchangeable) and the exact same font GoodGym Camden as is found on the website. Photos just don't do it justice and you'll have to come to one of our runs to see it for yourself.

Talking of our next run: Alara has had to postpone by a week so one half of the run is now TBA. We'll still be going to C4WS to make beds again though. Sign up here and I'll confirm that second bigger task when I have it.

C4WS Report (written by Beth)

After a short warm up, 13 runners ran to the American International Church to make beds for their homeless shelter. We got to work quickly and set up 12 beds, then headed to Granary Square for a fitness session. After a couple of laps of the square interspersed with star jumps/squats, we jogged gently back to the Living Centre for cake.

Cecil Sharp House

The rest of us headed north to the Home of English Folk and Dance that is Cecil Sharp House. Susannah was there to greet us and give us the rundown of what needed doing this week. There was branch-snapping, path-sweeping, dirt-collecting and leaf-clearing to be getting on with and the rain luckily held off just long enough for us. We managed to fill 9 bags of branches, twigs and leaves before having to put down our gloves and tools for the night.

There happened to be a lecture on MAGIC happening (ooooooooooooooo) in the room that the choir usually rehearses in at the back of Cecil Sharp. I'm sure it was just a fast-track Hogwarts scheme in disguise (hence the Potter-related pun), but we'll never know. Susannah was certainly keeping her cards close to her chest on this one.

With everything cleared, swept and snapped, it was time to head back for stretches and the MOUNTAINS of cake that awaited us at base, in honour of Sally's 200th.

NEXT TIME

COMMUNITY MISSIONS HERE: There's some plogging in Russell Square Gardens on Friday lunchtime between 12:30-13:10 coming up, as well as some lifting and shifting at Story Garden 14:00-15:30. NEXT WEEK'S RUN: Next week, we'll be back at C4WS as usual and the second task is TBA because of Alara having to shift back by a week. Sign up to stay in the loop.

Make sure to sign up for the NEW Alara run here if you'd like to come along and see the permaculture garden and orchards (plus, who's going to turn down a box of lovely granola?)!

Happy running and see you soon,

Well, that was something else wasn't it?!

42

Yup 41 of you amazingly wonderful people popped down to Camden on a freezing November evening to run around 5km and help out two wonderful organisations! Give yourself a round of applause!

So where to begin on this wondrous night - well everyone piled into the St Pancras and Somers Town Living Centre and after a far too long intro we split into two groups and so the night began!

The intro:

• We were joined by the lovely Hannah from Red January - she was down to experience a goodgym run first hand and to tell us about the upcoming partnership between RJ and GG. You can read all about Red January here, but Hannah, the founder, told us all about how she wanted to get people to beat the blues in January by using exercise - sounds perfect for us!
• Christmas is coming! Sign up to the Camden pizza party by the 27th Nov here, that's on the 11th December after the run and don't forget to warm up to that by going to the GG-wide xmas party on the 6th December, details here
• Did i say there were 42 of us!? Well a whopping SEVEN of that number were at GoodGym for the first time - a huge GGC welcome to: Alex, Maryam, Layli, Harriet, Laura, Eileen and of course Hannah from Red Jan!
• Finally shout out to Debbie who was indulging in a bit of GG tourism coming all the way from GG Newcastle!

Right, on to the night itself:

• Chris took a total of 16 people to the American International Church to make beds for those needing shelter last night. Whilst we're not pleased with the number it was rather serendipitous that 16 beds needed to be made! Well done to all of you including our walking group of Liz, Rosie and Frances!

• The remainder headed with me to Alara to do various mulch and leaf related tasks. We split into groups and had three teams working to collect leaves at the front of the space and collecting it all into a big pile. Another two teams collecting leaves at the back and transferring those leaves to the compost heap (while avoiding falling into the pond!) and finally we had one team working to wheelbarrow mulch to various parts of the back area. Everyone worked hard and kept themselves warm and before we knew it our time had passed! As ever Alex kindly rewarded everyone with a box of granola and with many thank yous in the air we headed to Granary Square to meet the other team.

G- RUN - ary Square:

• After taking everyone on a sighting run (it is right, right, right and right again) we split everyone into pairs and did a meet and retreat event. It was described with such spectacular levels of poor planning and organisation that it could only work impossibly well and after some initial troubles everyone lined up and shot off in opposite directions and before we knew it everyone was back and warm! Amazing stuff!

With that done it was time for some group photos with Hannah for Red January promotion and then we headed back to base. Once there we bumped into Ivo G, GG's Founder and Top Dog who had sadly missed the entire evening's fun - sad times! He joined us for the stretches and then the evening was done.

It was great to be back and so wonderful to see so many new and old faces - keep on coming and keep Camden great!

Cheers,
Pritesh

p.s. huge shout to Liz for the awesome Stereophonics pun!
p.p.s. apologies my photos are SO bad!

20 GoodGymers made it out on a cool November evening to do good in Camden on Wednesday night.

We had one newbie - woooooooo, welcome Bhakti!! (I hope to see you on a lot more runs with us over the next few winter months) - and after a quick intro and warmup we split up for this evening's tasks.

As always, if you want to sign up to next week's run already (you wonderful person, you!), here's how.

Our tasks

With me leading the C4WS Homeless Shelter and Louise with the SPCA group, we headed off in opposite directions and on to our tasks.

Louise and the SCPA team were leafleting tonight for a special event they had coming up soon. 75 leaflets were gone in a FLASH. Meanwhile, across town, wed arrived at the American Church to help set up the homeless shelter's beds for their first night running this winter. We were met by Jonathan and the team who told us a bit more about the shelter and what else they do for the local homeless community.

Tonight we made up 6 beds for rough sleepers. They have a typical capacity of 19/20 beds, but as it was their first night they didn't want to go all out just yet. I'm sure our task there will get bigger as the winter nights draw in even more. I don't know about you, but I feel that a task like this is even more meaningful than most other tasks we do as the GoodGym Camden group; making beds for the homeless is such a lifeline and I'm sure that - even though you might feel differently - our little task has such a big impact.

Over at the SPCA, after some initial confusion about where the leaflets are - we even got a slightly gratuitous mention that it was GoodGym who delivered the flyers - the team went on their merry way. Blitzing through their 75 in seemingly so many seconds, both groups headed to the fast favourite of Granary Square for a mini fitness session and time trial.

After 3 laps (or as many as folks could manage - it was quite a long run tonight when you combine all the different runs!) of the Square, while some of us were stretching and doing circuits, we all regrouped and jogged back to base.

Several stretches and more announcements later (more below!) we were all ready to go home or to the pub, and that's exactly what happened next.

Next time

COMMUNITY MISSION GALORE! We've got not one but two community missions for you to get your teeth stuck into this week. 1. Tomorrow (Thursday), Abi and the Story Garden team will be heading over to Skip Garden (aka Story Garden's old home) from 5pm-7pm to help out. More information and the signup link for task is here. 2. We've also got another great community mission coming up on Saturday morning at the Russell Square Gardens - you'll be helping to plant some flowerbeds for David and the team. The task will be from 10am-12pm but if you can only stay for an hour or so it doesn't matter, I'm sure the team would be very glad to see you whatever the weather. They're aiming to plant 10,000 flowerbulbs over the course of the day, and there are 15 of you lovely runners signed up so far - click here to put your name down for Saturday.

LET'S GET SOCIAL! I've banged on about it enough, I'm sure, but this is the last gasp; there's a huge GoodGym 10 year anniversary (a little late, I know) party happening in Southbank this coming Friday night. At Bar Topolski from around 6:30, all the information you could possibly need is right here. Pritesh is going for an all-time GoodGym record attendance for this one, so I'm sure you'll be cheered into the bar on Friday even if you can only stay for a single shot or drink. It would be lovely to see you.

NEXT WEEK: We'll be splitting the task from now until the end of February; we're heading back to the wonderful people at the C4WS Homeless Shelter. We're going to be making the 10-15 beds they have for local homeless people to get a good, warm night's sleep and it could not be more of a worthy cause. It's currently a fistfight between Scope Charity Shop and Cecil Sharp House for the other task, but I'll know for sure by around Sunday/Monday - so look out for the Weekly Fitness Email arriving into your inboxes on Monday. SIGN UP TO NEXT WEEK'S RUN HERE!

That's all from me.

Until next time,

Ben

P.S. Yes, we are continuing with Week 2 of LOTR puns. I don't know how long this will continue, but stay tuned.