Tonight 13 runners ran 2.3km to Park Hill School, despite the freezing cold conditions to help out in the forest school garden.

We had two visitors along with us tonight Louise (Goodgym Lewisham) and Arran (Goodgym Richmond) thank you both for making the trip to Croydon tonight you could have been anywhere else but you chose to come and join us. We started off the session with our signature photo outside Solutions then headed over to Southern House car park for a rigorous warm up before setting off towards Park Hill School.

When we arrived Esther was there awaiting us she had many different task for us to do, turning over the compost heap and combining two into one, clearing leaves from the pond, mending the raised beds, topping up the soil in the strawberry bed, cutting back some bushes for her to plant two trees and sweeping up the fallen leaves to be placed on the compost heap. The group quickly dived up into small groups and worked on the various tasks. Despite the cold conditions and the fact that it was an outdoor task spirits were still up and they chatted and laughed while discussing many different topics. Before we knew it time had flown by and it was time for us to leave, we bid our farewell and took some more pics before heading back to solutions.

Well done to all the runners who turned out today despite the cold conditions until next week enjoy the rest of your week and keep warm!

Congratulations Dovile and Jenny on completing your 10th good deed tonight.

All the best to our runners taking part in Beddington 10K this weekend. For those who are not going along to watch and fancy a community mission Nicola and a few others will be at Lloyd Park Junior Parkrun, sign up here.

Fancy joining us on a parkrun? On Saturday 7th December members of Goodgym Croydon will be running together as a group at South Norwood Parkrun why not come along and join us, be sure to come in your Goodgym top, we will be going at the pace of the slowest member in the group, sign up here but don't forget your barcode.

Next week we are off to Dovile and Magda's children's school to help with their garden, they have both told the school about us and how marvelous we are at giving 60 minutes make over a run for their money so do sign up and lets not ruin the image the have painted of us.

Last night we welcomed Magdalena to her first GoodGym, session due to work commitments she was unable to join us last week, but she was here tonight to take part in our 10 years celebratory run to Park Hill Junior School.

Having seen some of the run reports and pictures of the night before and not wanting to be out done I thought it would be good to show some of Croydon's iconic places after all everyone knows about the wealth of talented and famous people who lives or lived in the borough. We had two groups who took different routes to Park Hill as there were so many places to have a photo op with our new flags. Look at the pictures and see for yourself the fun and joy all participants had running around posing for photos before our task.

When a plan comes together

Both groups arrived at Park Hill School within minutes of each other, Esther must have realised we were out having fun before we arrived and as a punishment the we were locked out! Not for long though as Tim and Emma had made their was to the task and started without us but knew re-enforcement was coming.

Esther had a lot of tasks for us to do, weeding, digging up, fixing the raised beds, sorting out the compost area, cleaning the pond and even cutting up some Christmas trees into smaller pieces. Despite it being 9 months since Christmas these trees was still in great condition apart from the leaves being brown as opposed to green. For those who didn't want the conventional Christmas tree but wanted the Christmas smell these trees would have been great but sadly no one in the group last night had that shabby chic taste.

The group chatted about races, training, parkrun and many other topics as they worked on the various task we had to complete, but unlike last week this week we were more prepared because when darkness descended on us we had our torches and flood lights primed and ready to go.

*Thanks to Paul, Nicola and Juliet for leading the two groups around Croydon for our photos, anyone wanting an arts tour or history tour be sure to contact me and I'm sure one of my trusted guides would be willing to assist.

Anyone fancy joining myself, Martin and Paul at South Norwood Parkrun on Saturday? I will be pacing Martin in an attempt to complete the course in under 26 minutes, then grab a bite and head to Park Hill for Super Saturday! Have you signed up to SUPER SATURDAY AS YET? See below link it would be nice to have as many people there as possible and remember you get to choose how long you stay and what time to arrive.

Upcoming events

21 September 2019 Super Saturday

28 September 2019 Royal Betlehem Parkrun takeover we still have various roles to be filled.

Beddington Park 10K join our two latest recruits Magdalena and Dovile in this local race.

Launches

GoodGym continues to grow over the next few weeks we have 2 launches:

• Leeds, 25th September.

• Crewe, 2nd October.

We're very excited about these as it's great to bring GoodGym to some of the smaller communities (Crewe) across the country. If you know anyone in Leeds and Crewe please tell them how great it is going to be. and encourage them to sign up.

Next week were staying local again as we head over to our friends at ECCO, sign up here it is within walking distance with a great fitness session planned.

Today 9 runners set off from Solutions to Park hIll Junior School to assist in their forest School area. When we arrived Esther was there with her car filled with with plants that had been given to the school by the Chelsea flower show. Upon emptying the contents of her car she told that she would like us to plant the plants but before that we had to weed the area and dug up the soil. THe re was also a path along where the flowers were supposed to be planted where she wanted us to build a border with some left over wood from her shed, this was to prevent the children from walking into the flower bed once we had planted the flowers.

We got stuck in and some member of the group made themselves comfortable as they weeded the area for the plants, it wasn't before long that all the weeding had been completed when one of the members who was weeding realised that the ground she was sitting on was actually wet from the rain, how didn't knew it was wet? Good question but one even she was unable to answer.

She was so engrossed in weeding and chatting away that it wasn't until she had finished that she realised. (my explanation)

Elsewhere in the group other member were busy clearing the weeds from the path we had made on a previous visit as it had become over grown.

Andy and Ian was busily working away on creating the wooden border one was digging the soil while the other laid the border. The weeders had completed the weeding so in came the diggers, while the digging was going on the weeder moved to another area close to the pond to weed but it was a step too far for one member of the team. No she did not fall into the pond but I think there was a near miss! With weeding near the pond proving difficult and the digging crew had finished digging the soil the weeders changed jobs and began planting the plants. As they panted a few of us cleared some of the algae from the pond where we were able to spot some newts and tadpoles.

Before we newt, all the plants were planted and with 5 minutes to go we had a mad rush to lay gravel around the plants giving it a bit of an artistic look that Esther had requested.

Congratulations to Ian on completing his double good deeds today, Ian and myself was apart of the 150 strong volunteers at city hall this morning as part of team London and GoodGym run to do good for national volunteer week. Only 9 more deeds to go Ian before you are a member of the 50 club, sign up for some missions and some more double so we can celebrate your achievements at the next social on 25 June.

Next week Events

11th June group run to the Scouts to help tidy up their garden area sign up here, Juliet will be leading the group as I'm off to Portugal in search of some sun and relaxation please give her your support.

12th June The Dino Dash relay have you signed up as yet or registered your team?

Tonight we welcomed first timers Clara and Andrew, Clara heard about GoodGym from a colleague at work and decided to give it a try while dragging Andy along.

Tonight 15 runners and walkers headed to Park Hill to help clear the nettles and brambles in the area being used for their forest school. On arrival at Park Hill School we were met by Esther who explained what she would like us to do. Upon receiving Esther's instructions we split up into groups and tackled the areas Esther wanted us to focus on. It was dark, cold and wet but we were not deterred as laugher and chatter could be heard throughout the various groups, conversations of food in the Canaries, Evolve's Big Sleep Out 2019, Volunteering at the Croydon Half Marathon, GoodGym Euro trip, the shindig and also who have been nominated to attend the upcoming GoodGym Olympics. We managed to clear a good amount of the nettles and brambles, filled two large sacks before having to down our tools and head back to solutions for our fitness session.

Gareth huffed and puffed but could not blow us off course

Last weekend saw GoodGym members in all areas taking part in a number of races more notably London GoodGymers were out in full force running and volunteering at the Vitality Big Half. Despite the strong winds of Storm Gareth we all stuck to our guns and ran from Tower Bridge to Greenwich. As if running the streets of London in strong winds wasn't bad enough Nicola took it a notch up by taking part and completing the Grizzly 2019 Trails of the Unexpected. Welll done Nicola, at least there's no videos floating on youtube that you know of showing your struggle during the storm, unlike Lukas Bates who completed the the Big Half in a Big Ben costume, can you spot any GoodGym members in the clip?

Next week we are heading over to Peppermint Centre to help them get ready for Spring, sign up here please note this will be a longer run and the option of running there and taking the tram or bus back is available.

Last week we had 15 runners coming along to the first group run this week we have done one better with 16 wonder what is instore for us next week anyone care to hazzard a guess?

It's our second group run of the year and our first celebration of the month, joining us for her 51st good deed was Stephanie, having completed her 50th on the weekend at a mission. She'll soon be wearing her snazzy new black t-shirt. Up next to celebrate their 50th are Ingrid and Ros 2019 is the year for milestones and record breaking nice to have our Croydon faithfuls amongst the honours list.

Today we welcomed first timers Erin and Martin I'm confident we will be seeing them again soon. The look on their faces after today's run said it all, they felt the GoodGym magic and will be back for more. Be sure to extend onto them some more GoodGym love by cheering them.

• Welcome to our visitors Tina, Clare and Darryl.

We are halfway through the month and going good on out distance target in the January Challenge, check out our stats we will definitely get the distance. We are making an inroad on the deeds but was it SMART? Regardless of it being SMART or not we will give it a good go and hold our heads high come 1st February when the final figures are tallied up.

Introductions, congratulations and GoodGym domestics out the way we headed over to Southern House car park for our warm up, while Juliet, Ellie and Erin our walkers headed to the task.

We arrived at Park Hill school where we were met by Esther, she had list of task all lined up for us to do but today we were more than ready for her list of task after all we were 16 strong.

• Cleaning the pond (Erin, Juliet and Clare)
• Sweeping the leaves from the path (Erin)
• Clearing a patch of grass and weeds for bulbs to be planted (Ellie, Stephanie, Kate, Zara and Ros)
• Making a path for the forest adventures (Martin, Nicola, Audrey, Paul, Andy, Darryl and Tina)
• Wrapping the beans in blankets in preparation for the frost (Juliet, Tina, Paul, Clare and Erin)

Having completed the various task that was assigned to us we bid Esther farewell and headed through the gates of the school were we completed a lap around the school with Ellie and Juliet being our time keeper. After the last person came in we then celebrated Stephanie's 50th by refueling with some celebrations then headed back down the hill towards East Croydon for our cool down stretches.

A massive thanks to our host Solutions gym for allowing us to use an area in the gym for some core work, and stretches.

Next week we are off to Tunstall Nursery sign up here, this group run is withing walking distance from our start location and at the end there will also be another opportunity for a time trial.

Events coming up in Croydon over the next few weeks

South Norwood Parkrun take over sign up here please also indicate on the spread sheet what you would like to do. You will receive a good deed for volunteering.

Quiz night and social sign up here remember if you join their mail list you will receive 20% off your food and drinks in January.

GoodGym News

We just had the BIGGEST EVER week of GoodGym activities. Group run attendances were a whopping 1190 with community mission attendance at 243. With missions and coach visits there was a total of 1,621 good deeds. Well done everyone!

WWF Partnership - GoodGym will be partnering with WWF for Earth Hour 2019, Saturday 30th March. The yearly campaign aims to raise awareness of environmental issues by asking people to turn off their lights for one hour. A lot of major landmarks around the world are involved in the campaign and there is always international press coverage. The plan is to have each GoodGym area complete an environmental task on their group runs the week commencing Monday 25th March.

For Earth Hour itself (8.30 - 9.30pm) on Saturday night there will be a big group run in London, with community missions/group runs happening around the country in those areas that are keen.

GoodGym 10 Year Anniversary. This September will mark 10 years of GoodGym's existence.

To mark the occasion GG Central would like to bring together runners, trainers, partners, older people and task owners for a party of some kind. GG Central are looking to get input/ideas on making it happen, there are three ways to get involved in shaping it: * Attend a meeting on the the 31st of January 6-8pm at Somerset House London * Join an online hangout on the 7th of Feb at 7.30pm * If you can make it to either of the above email dora@goodgym.org to RSVP.

School was out for the day however that didn’t stop 12 GoodGymers from running 2.1km to help out in the garden at Park Hill Junior School, running beneath the beautiful sunset.

We were met by Esther who explained to us what she wanted us to do, tools selected we had a group of weeders, litter pickers and pruners.

No thyme to mint about the cola bush

Workers in the edible beds were busy weeding what was left of the vegetables that would amount to much as winter sets in. The smell of mint, thyme and cola whiffed in the air. Before today I did not know there was such a thing as a cola plant.

Punkin’ out

Due to winter approaching we had to root up the small pumpkkn vine as it would not survive the frost and cold to bear fruits.

Logging on

On the other side of the garden Paul, Dan, Ian and Karim were busy cutting back the brambles and stacking the logs they encountered in their pursuit of clearing another space for the children to cultivate when the time comes.

Igrid our chief litter picker and Elinor where busy picking up litter from the surrounding area.

Congratulations Andy on completing his 25 good deed, show him some love by giving him some cheers.

After completing the task, we went out the gates where 10 runners embarked on a loop around the school our current record holder is Any who completed the loop in 02:41:63 (2 mins 41 secs). I have now created a strava segment so for those of you on Strava. Next time we visit Parkhill be prepared to have a go at dethroning Andy however due to the segment only being created tonight it currently, sits blank so if you have some free time over the next few day please feel free to have a go. You will have bragging rights until we all go back again.

I have also created a GoodGym Croydon Strava Club you are all invited to join.

As we headed back from the task a few of the group ran off in different directions toward their homes leaving 6 of us to partake in the fitness session. Well done to the last 6 standing and hope you enjoyed your fitness session.

Well done to our resident tourist Paul in participating in the SEEA Road relays in Crystal Palace at the weekend as part of the GoodGym race team, good luck for the coming weekend where he will be doing the Box Hill 10K.

Next week we are of to St Augustines's Church, where we will be assisting the residents in filling a skip hope you can make it.