Wed 2nd Oct 2019 at 6:45pm
29 of us GoodGym runners assembled at the Life Centre on Wednesday night for what was to be my first run as your new GoodGym Camden Trainer without stabilisers - thanks for all your help and support Pritesh!
We welcomed two new runners to the ever expanding posse that is Camden - hey Olivia and Rebecca, we hope to see you on another one soon.
Tonight was also special for another reason for someone else; Abi! Our run tonight was her 200th good deed(!) and with everyone else clapped and cheered, Sally duly presented her with the beautiful GG Camden crimson cape with 200 sewn on in big silver numbers. 200 good deeds is such a brilliant milestone and I hope you'll all pile in on Abi's page and give her some good cheer and congratulations; that's 200 times you could've otherwise said no or not bothered to get stuck in, and it's a wonderful achievement. Whether you're new or old to GoodGym, keep doing what you're doing and the good deeds will soon add up.
Tonight's task was Alara Wholefoods, just up the road and over the canal.
After listening to Alex from Alara about what we needed to do, we split up into Team Mulch, Team Wheelbarrow, Team Weeding, Team Harvest and got to it in the best GoodGym production line you could possibly dream of. With two wheelbarrows and spades, mulch was dug out, loaded onto the wheelbarrows and sprinted round the corner to the nearby orchard. Here another team was in place to scrape around the trees and load up the mulch - 2 loads per tree. Elsewhere Team Weeding were doing an excellent job of tidying up a path and some of rubber tire planters. Down the road and through the trees, Team Harvest were getting on with plucking as many apples from the trees (with Alex's permission!) and clearing a bean field.
We mulched, we weeded, we cleared, we stripped bean poles and we harvested some apples. Special shoutout to Hanry for providing the lion's share of the headtorches for tonight's task - we would have been ruined without them!
How much fun did we all have? Toooooo mullllchh fun!
By 8pm (perfect timing!), we'd managed to mulch an orchard, picked a lot of apples from the trees, stripped the bean poles back and done a lot of good weeding and sweeping and it was time to run on. As a special treat, Alex had some boxes of granola ready for us. There wasn't enough to go around, so he invited us into the granola warehouse (actual heaven for some of us) to pick up some more. A few group photos later, we waved goodbye to Alex and motored on.
Down along the canal, with our headtorches beaming and granola rattling, we hit Granary Square for a few laps before jogging back with our granola boxes as our maracas, for a cool down stretch. Some of us headed on to the pub for a celebratory drink and a piece of John's homemade vegan brownies - it was his birthday on Tuesday (and they tasted delicious by the way, John!) - and others headed home.
If you enjoyed yourself last night, why not sign up to our next run?
And don't forget we've got a Community Mission coming up on Thursday 3rd October at Story Garden - you can sign up here
Thursday 26th September 2019
Elisabetta has done their first good deed with GoodGym.
Elisabetta is a now a fully fledged GoodGym runner. They've just run to do good for the first time. They are out there making amazing things happen and getting fit at the same time.
Wed 25th Sep 2019 at 6:45pm
22 intrepid runners braved the surprisingly mild evening to take on our two tasks on Wednesday night. The first, just around the corner from our meeting point, was shifting and sorting wood with some litter-picking at the Story Garden, led by the wonderful Louise. The second - slightly further afield - was ripping out some flowerbeds and tidying up garden waste at Saint Pancras Community Assocation, led by myself and Pritesh.
We had not one, not two, but THREE new runners joining us tonight, Elisabetta, Meghan and Bettina it was great to have you with us! Hope you enjoyed yourselves and I'm looking forward to see you on another run with us all soon.
After the introduction and our warm-up stretches, we split up and headed out to our tasks, hoping that it wouldn't rain. It seems that a winning combination of Abi's self-confessed good luck charms and Steve's weather optimism that it wouldn't chuck it down was really all we needed for a rainfree run, so thank you both!
As with many GoodGym runs, several of us pondered 'What really is a weed?" as we were getting through our tasks, but we managed to fill 10 bags up over the 30 minutes we had to get it done. There's more to do so I'm sure we'll be back very soon. Over at the Story Garden, the sorting and stacking of wood went brilliantly. Hats off to all!
Once we'd finished off our tasks for the night, we headed on to Granary Square - with the Story Garden team joining us along the way. Here, we played a game of Rock, Paper and Scissors (fitness edition), with sprints for the winners and planks for the 'losers'; everyone is a winner when it comes to fitness! After a quick two laps of the square later - increasing our speed on every section, we headed back, cooled down and a few of us went on to the pub.
Looking forward to seeing you all next week for what will be my first (eek!) run without the brilliant Pritesh leading us on. You'll be greatly missed, but will always be welcome back whenever you'd like!
Have a great week and see you next time.
Happy running,
Ben