Firstly huge apologies for the late-ness of the drinks report...I think I have just about recovered!

So a whopping FIFTY ONE, yup, 51 of you turned up to celebrate the heroes of August and generally just let anyone that was listening that South London is the place to be! It was a fantastic sight to see with so many of you there to hear yet another ridiculous speech from myself and just hang out and be so "GoodGym-y"! Loved it!

As this is late I am going to keep it short so here's a recap on what was said:

Heroes

As ever, until the 30th September you can hit this link to see the heroes data in more detail!

James Poole topped distance with 574.8km...will anyone knock him off the top spot? We had some honourable mentions for Paul Bown and Patrick Luong who hit 320 and 267km respectively - some full-on marathon training happening for both those guys!

In what I have recently termed the 'Bristol Leagues' we had a non-Bristol winner! Most cheers given this month by one Simon Loughran (that's pronounced Lochran btw) with an incredible 2139 cheers - did he actually manage to lead any of his runs?! A small number of those must've found their way to our most cheered runner this month, with 256 cheers it's Paul Becker...from Bristol!

Topping the good deeds table last month we had a return for Patrick Luong with 21 good deeds, couple with all his marathon training that is a great achievement!

Now to the coveted most new runners in the last month award...continuing our trend of new boroughs winning this accolade it's... Wandsworth with 62 new runners in August! Congratulations and keep telling everyone about GoodGym so you can boost your area's numbers!

I had some issues with my 50s and 100s data last month so apologies if I've missed you off but otherwise a warm and very well deserved welcome to Cecilia to the Black T-shirt club with 50 good deeds and getting their wings with a wonderful 100 good deeds is Graham Atkins and Antonia Kanczula! Congrats and make sure you give them a cheer!

News

Two of our previous guest speakers completed their challenges in the last month – Melissa 'Moosenshoes' got thru her #runtheboroughs challenge and George 'Ironman' Bright completed his first ever Ironman in an incredible time of 10 hours and 28 minutes! Fantastic achievements!

We also had Danica Priest completing the Rejkjavik Half Marathon and the Race for life Half marathon, Sarah Moore joining her in the Race for Life Half – well done to you!

We’ve our last (official) race of the year coming up in Cardiff – we’re looking forward to that and a number of other races are taking places with marathons over the next month for a number of GG runners – good luck!

International Pun of the Month

A great set of puns this month, 10 on the long-list, we had 46 votes on the night and for their first ever win with 17 votes (37% of the vote)…

Only tools and (task) forces from Wandsworth!!!

Well done guys!

Right that is that, thanks again for all coming and apologies for the delay with this. Look forward to seeing you all next month, we’ll be in Angel, it’ll be my birthday – it will be a blast!

Cheers,

Pritesh

p.s. Also thank you to Anonymous who found the time to pen me a letter during drinks - see pic!

p.p.s Massive thanks to John for taking some photos on the night as I completely forgot!

26 runners ran between 5k and 3k to paint for Kentish Town Tenants Association and help at Skip Garden

A thick layer of cloud hung over Camden this Wednesday evening, June certainly wasn't bringing us summer and it wasn't bringing us Paul 'PB' Bown either!

We did have two new faces - welcome to Sarah and Lewis and for the second week in a row we had some GG Bristol visitors in the shape of the infamous Paul 'PB Sr.' Becker and Dave Guest! Great to have you all in Camden :)

With Paul off sick (get well soon!) myself and Polly took charge and we split into Team 'PA' and Team 'UL'...PAUL...geddit?! With the briefing done and a great warm up from Polly off we went. Here's what the teams got up to:

• Team PA led by Pritesh

Team PA headed up to Kentish Town to help the tenants association with the upkeep of the estate. With Chris ably leading the way we got there with plenty of time to continue our painting efforts.

It's not creosote!

We met Vaughan, donned our gloves, split into teams and got straight into the painting. Richard and Steve bumped into a local resident while painting and filled him in on what we were up to - he thought GoodGym was an excellent idea and asked if he could take a photo for his social media streams and we duly obliged - check the pic here.

Everyone did an excellent job - we got the smaller fences done before a few started on the larger fence and before we knew it it was time to head off. We said our goodbyes to Vaughan and then Chris led us on an alternate route. This led us to the canal where we bumped into some of Team UL. We cheered them on and then completed our run back to Somers Town.

• Team UL led by Polly

Team UL went off to Skip Garden to move logs, a water butt and turn the Ridan composter.

Four runners took off to the canal with trolleys to collect chopped wood which will be used to make a bug hotel. Steve led on this having previously done this task - thanks Mr C!

Bug Hotel

The remaining six helped to relocate a water butt, so it can collect rain water from the roof of a new shelter. Paul “chief gnome”, told us rain water is best for plants because of its lower pH value versus mains water. Next, the team then got to work churning the contents of the Ridan composter with a particularly enthusiastic Will managing to get most of the compost down himself...well done Will, no harm done!

Paul said he was always surprised how much we get done on our visits and was very chuffed with the work.

Next we took to the canal to run 3k & 5k and coo over the goslings.

With everyone back we had a stretch and a few of us headed for a well-deserved drink and some sweet potato fries!

Thanks for all your help in supporting us with Paul away and don't forget to sign up for next week here and tell all your friends about #volunteersweek and the starter session on Sunday!

PSB & PM out!

6 women, 3.2km run, skirting boards / radiators / doors painted and a boxercise mini class all in 90 minutes.

Talk about getting things done!

With an all female ensemble (hello to Jessfor the first time), we set off the 1 mile run to Copleston Centre Church to meet Vicar Paul and Catherine who had some glossing for us to do.

Gloss paint: Shaken or stirred?

We shook two and stirred one FYI. Didn't really see any difference but we will let you know. The centre has a cafe where they host meals for refugee organisations and for homeless people and it's gotten used and well loved over the years. After 45 minutes, we'd covered skirting boards, 2 radiators and 2 door frames and it looked like new!

With the knowledge that Jo might use the hill we had run up as a training aid for the journey home, jelly babies were shared around and what followed was reminiscent of a GG Islington debate. Is there a difference in flavour of the various coloured jelly babies? Differing opinions meant we had to test it out... Luckily, the boxercise class next door hadn't filled up to witness this joy. The answer... Not clean cut as only 2 out of 6 of us got our jelly baby colour correct. (You can cheer Beth and Ruth for this unique talent).

After mentally prepping for hill running, the boxercise class leader threw a curve ball in the shape of pads and gloves and invited us to join their class.

6 jab cross combos with shuttle runs in between for 15 minutes is a lot harder than you'd think. After a few rounds of 'start with your left hand,' we'd sorted our co-ordination out and we're loving it. Both Becky and Chiara were particularly strong boxercise fans.

More than a little warmed up and rid of any midweek stress, we ambled back down the hill to Old Spike, glowing and glossed.

Just in case you hadn't noticed... you can click on each runner's name and cheer them on! Or even add them to your team so you can cheer on all of their achievements (without being too creepy, please).

A small and lovely group of runners won against storm jonas tonight running 5.8km to sort out baby clothes donations for the Camberwell Salvation Army.

Luckily, the forecast rain was a no show and all we had to deal with were the hills around Denmark Hill (the clue was in the name really). We were met by Janet who told us a bit about the baby bank and the refugee centres that they provide for. There are new mothers coming through the refugee centres every 3 days with nothing. Brilliantly, lots of people had been very generous over the Christmas period with baby clothes, booties and random assortments of towels, bibs and even swimwear! Our job was to sort it into sizes and organise a loft full of baby-related goods.

Much cooing and wishing for the clothes in grown up sizes ensued and the new dad of the group was our expert in advising on label-less clothing. We finished sharpish and were given jelly babies by Janet to help us back up Camberwell Grove.

Fuelled by sugar, the squatting and sprinting uphill felt a little less torturous and we finished off with a stretch on the Rye.

Huge thanks to everyone who came along. Next week, we're off to clear another loft but this time it's for the Coplestone Centre. Join up here.

We're also running a starter session on Saturday at 10am meeting at Peckham Rye Station arcade. We'll be done by 11.30 so join us and bring along anyone who might be a bit nervous about getting involved.

A record 52 people turned up for a run at Somers Town Community Centre.

Cooooor. This is me, Shaun speaking. I've been the Camden GoodGym 'shouty running based leader man' since April 2013, and this was my last ever run in Camden. Loads of people came along and made the run really really special. I'm going to miss each and every person who has ventured to Somers Town, been shouted at by Bob the caretaker, put up with my incoherent babbling, and ran across Camden. I've had an amazing time lifting, shifting, carrying, weeding, turning, tossing, painting, delivering, pruning, watering, and digging in the name of GoodGym!

Community Sports

Our job tonight was simple. Camden are trying to get people active, which is great! They're focusing on some of the most deprived areas of the borough, Somers Town and Regents Park Ward, offering free Sports groups or classes in an effort to get people moving. There's women's basketball sessions, free tennis, and jogging clubs available for people to give it a bash. They need to get the message out there so asked us if we could tether some posters to the railing on estates across the area.

Cafe Cacophony

We managed to cram 52 people into a tiny cafe at Somers Town where we divided into 6 teams. Each team was armed with a bunch of posters, some string, a map of their designated areas, and a smart phone. Their job was to dash off as a team and display as many posters as possible in 40mins. As an additional challenge they were asked to pick up any Christmas trees they noticed strewn about the estates. Thursday was the last day people could throw them in the designated recycling bins and we wanted to make sure each and every one was reused!

Dash back to the drop off

When done they dashed back to the drop off (some quicker than others!), where we lobbed them into the recycling dump and headed on our merry way. We had some corking trees- we collected about 12, some more decrepit than others...

We all felt like stretching the legs so took a detour to Granary Square where some people legged it round the block while others watched the Lumiere light show being projected onto the buildings at the square. Cracking stuff- recommend you look out for it this weekend. Here's more details about the light show.

The end

So, that was that! We jogged back to Somers Town, did a stretch, and headed off into the night (well the pub...then off into the night!). Thanks to everyone who made it such a top evening. As Jeffrey the Butler from Fresh Prince once said "See you soon Yo!"