16 GoodGymers ran 2.5km and composted, sieved and spread mulch for Skip Garden

Thank you very much for coming to the first GoodGym Camden Starter Session of the year, it was lovely to meet all the first timers - Teb, Lina, Mafalda, Amy, Matt, Haoming, Sophie and Natasha! Brilliant stuff!

In the news this week:

1. GG Camden is moving its start location from next week, 100 metres down the road. We'll be meeting at the following address: The St Pancras and Somers Town Living Centre, 2 Ossulston Street, London, NW1 1DF. We'll still be meeting at 6.45pm and finishing at 8.30pm as normal.
2. GoodGym is holding its first time trial of the year at Regents Park on Sunday 29th January if you want to take place, more information here.
3. There are lots of races and events that GoodGym'ers are attending. Fancy joining them? Look under the 'Events' section on website or the GoodGym Race Team page. It's always great to have an aim whatever the distance :)

Right onto the evenings activities; after introducing ourselves and using Beth Hoskins for lots of good deed examples we checked out the new start location so we know where to go from next week. We then had an active warm up with dynamic stretches, high knees and more.

With myself leading and Polly back-marking we ran the 1km to Skip Garden, up the hill to Granary Square, passed the Dishoom queues and along the path to the wonderful hidden garden.

Upon our arrival the wonderful Gwen, who works at Skip Garden, gave us a wonderful tour and introduction, here are some key highlights:

1. Skip Garden is run by Global Generation.
2. They grow their own produce and have a cafe.
3. Importantly they do lots of educational work with young people and workplaces in the area.
4. The idea of Skip Garden is that it's moveable anywhere in the Kings Cross area, this is their 4th site.

For the task we split into two groups - the workout team and the task team - we swapped around after 10 minutes so everyone had a chance to do both! The wonderful Polly led on the task and described it as such:

We took it in turns to operate the Ridan (manual composting machine). Meanwhile the rest of the group sieved the compost that came out of it's BOTTOM. The lumps left in the sieve got put back in the Ridan and the now fine soil got spread amongst the flower beds outside the Skip Garden!

Smelly stuff!

On team workout we focused on some conditioning with some bench steps, tricep dips, squats, star jumps and press jumps. This was all mixed in with 'out fast & steady back' running. When switching teams we were stopped by Kings Cross Security wondering "asking what we were doing!" With which Beth replied "I'm doing GOOD!" (well something like that). Pretty amusing stuff ha

Security STOP!

Once we were all collected together and lots of sieved compost had been spread we headed back to Granary Square for some glute-balancing exercises and a running game before returning home.

It was a wonderful evening topped off by Bob welcoming us back with hot chocolate and biscuits.

Thank you for coming and I hope to see you next week, we are going to Cecil Sharp House to do some gardening. Sign up here.

PB out.

On a lovely Wednesday evening 23 GoodGymers ran between 4-10km, delivered leaflets and did some DIY.

Wow lots of newcomers to GoodGym, welcome to Kat, Lucy, Mara, Sylwia, Rosie and Frederic. Fantastic to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. GG monthly drinks, an opportunity for everyone from GoodGym to meet up, is on Thursday 6th October (Pritesh's birthday), sign up here
2. Well done to Danica who completed Richmond Half Marathon on Sunday in 1.59.29 - completing her sub-2 hour goal. Well done #proud.
3. Also well done to Steve Moody for doing Hull Marathon at the weekend, he is planning to do a marathon a month between now and April, amazing!

Our tasks this week were to help Abbey Community Centre spread the word of their amazing work through leafleting and doing some DIY for C4WS, a national homeless charity.

DIY Run Report:

After a game of tag we did a short run to C4WS led by the wonderful Sophie Hedges, arriving to find a cabinet and desk to put together.

Ikea!

With Ikea instructions, great minds, allen keys, and focused hands we were sure to complete the task. We lacked a little space in the room so five of us headed for a run around the block while the other 10 split into teams, with Polly in overall charge, putting the furniture together.

With a swap of DIYers and runners we were only getting closer to finishing the mammoth task. Boom the cabinet was first to be put together, after a group pic 10 people headed to Russell Square while five team members stayed to continue the finishing the job.

We've done the Good now for the GYM!

Intervals - this weeks fitness session was based around a PYRAMID, using time as our tool. It went something like this:

• 1 min fast
• 1 min slow
• 2 min fast
• 2 min slow
• 1 min fast
• 1 min slow

Everyone did very well and really smashed the fitness session!

Meanwhile the DIYers continued to put together the table, with Steve, Arnulfo and Polly staying until 8.45pm! #commitment #good

Leaflet report written by Pritesh:

Tonight I had seven hardy runners joining me on my favourite run up to Abbey Community Centre. It was a great little group and we kept a good pace (including the ‘stomp’ up Primrose Hill) and had some nice chats about what we’d been up to over the summer and various race plans for the winter too.

Tower Block Climb!

We weren’t sure if there’d been a ‘cock-up’ as we arrived at the community centre as there seemed to be no lights on but Laura was awaiting us and was just saving some energy. Tonight’s task was some leaflet distribution in two nearby tower blocks to let the residents know about the various upcoming activities at the community centre. We had a 102 flats in each tower block and so we split into two teams (“How about girls vs boys?”) and Laura then led us out to the blocks.

Girls vs boys

The girls took on ‘Casterbridge’ and the boys ‘Snowman’, yup there really is a Snowman House – we suggested Steve might want to consider a new place here so he could have the address ‘Steve Coman, Snowman…’ Both teams went hard at the task but in the end the boys prevailed and were first back to the community centre. The girls were not far behind and Laura then showed us the mural that has gone up (we whitewashed the walls on a previous task so great to see the outcome) in the kids playground. There was some discussion over whether the boys might’ve taken the lift but the evidence was inconclusive and so thoughts turned to the pun…with ‘Snowman’ and ‘Thomas Hardy’ as possible references we thought we’d be in for a jackpot… we came up with nothing!

Lemonades!

So with that we had a quick group pic and some goodbyes and then we headed back into the night. We naturally split into a fast and faster group and headed back home for a good stretch and then a few lemonades at the pub. Smashing night – thanks all.

Thank you as always for coming along, sign up for next week's run here.

PB out.