JANUARY CHALLENGE SHOUT-OUT: It's January, it's cold, it's always dark and everyone's broke. Luckily GoodGym Camden's here with lots of ways you can do good and get fit (and win this Challenge for Camden!), all you need to do is make sure your Strava is linked up to your GG account and get those miles logged in. It's a friendly competition between GoodGyms around the UK, but the key word there is competition and we must win! Camden's now #5 of all GoodGyms in all the land, but it's only the 9th and we've got a lot of January left. Sign up to the January Challenge here. (Well done if you've already signed up and linked Strava!)

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A whopping 35 GoodGymers shook off the running cobwebs and rang in the New Year with a run out in Camden on Wednesday night.

We welcomed two new folks to the herd - shout out to Niccole and Lauren. I hope Camden is what you'd hoped for (and then some) and I'm looking forward to seeing you out with us again soon.

How about Christmas Tree Run (Take 2)? Same time, same place next week - sign up now!

Tonight was the second Annual GoodGym Camden Christmas Tree Run as well as our regular bed-making at the American International Church.

A small but mighty group of 9 - led by the brilliant Louise - ran down to Jonathan and the team at the American International Church on Tottenham Court Road for our first (official, non-community mission) bed-making of the New Year. 8 beds were made for those who needed them and, as the heavens opened and the rain bucketed down, a slightly longer run was on the cards for the return leg back to the Living Centre.

As the beds were being made, 5 packs of runners had fanned out across Camden Town in competition for the Cardamom Cup (but mostly just for the bragging rights of being the winning team) in the...

Second-Annual Camden Christmas Tree Run!

For the second year running, Camden runners went head-to-head in a competition to harvest as many abandoned Christmas trees from the streets around their chosen collection point as they possibly could. The time they had? 70 minutes. 5 teams. 25 runners. And the victors? Returning to the Living Centre at 20:28, just 2 minutes away from disqualification, was TEAM TREE-MENDUS with a whopping 14 trees collected and thrown over a fence (into the collection point).

The final scores were as follows:

Team Tree-Mendus - 14 (8.79km)

Team Tree-Angle - 11

Team Five-and-a-Wreath - 5 (8km)

Team Pines 4 Pints - 4

Team Ho (ho ho) - 4

Commiserations to the other teams, but don't worry - you've got another chance to win next week! With a hat tip to sportsmanship, Team Tree-Mendus unanimously decided to give Team Tree-Angle the revered Cardomom Bun baked by yours truly this morning, to enjoy at the pub. Rumour is that there might be more baked goods for next week's competition.

Next time

COMMUNITY MISSIONS GALORE: In true Red January spirit, Liz has been organising community missions for us Camdeners to get stuck into; Plogging - lunchtime litter picks - this Friday (anyone can join in, regardless of location), Volunteering with the Canal and River Trust this Saturday and, next week, Volunteering at the Ally Pally Parkrun!.

NEXT WEEK'S RUN: We'll be back with the Christmas Tree Run (Take Two) and some of us will be going back to the American International Church. Come along!

Happy running (and missioning) until then.

Thanks go to Liz for the excellent punnage.

28 people caused no constitutional outrage in Camden, ran over 5km and helped Cecil Sharp House!

As Westminster was hell bent on tearing the country down we had the certainty that bringing a group together, doing some running and offering up our services to help others would bring calm and happiness and so it did!

Tonight we continued Goodgym's partnership with Team GB and learnt that people are not fans of badges! However we're pleased to support the initiative to get people more active and we have some great photos to prove it!

Once the photoshoot was done (thanks Freya and Rosie) we gathered for a rather disjointed intro welcoming Laurent and Ramona for their first ever GoodGym session and taking in the news of the social next week, community missions at Story Garden and all the health and safety and then with a quick warm up done... we were off!

With varying abilities in the group we soon decided to split into two and Rosie led the keener group ahead. At Cecil Sharp we heard from Susannah about the building and why our help is so important. This week we were working on making the grounds and garden look their prettiest. We split into two groups with 10 at the front sweeping and weeding and the remainder at the back doing the same with some additional tasks to keep everyone busy!

With it being a big job and with lots to do we worked hard for 40mins and got everything done. Susannah was very grateful and reckoned we'd done over two days worth of work! A job very well done.

After some group photos in the fading light we were off, again with two groups. We made good progress back to the Crick, stretched and then headed to the pub or home!

Thanks everyone, Frances is in charge next week as we head to Alara, you can sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh