Two Tasks, 27 runners. It went like this....

Stockwell Park Estate

Half the group opted for a shorter run, but blimey that did not mean less of a work out. There was digging holes, pulling (gently) out daffodil bulbs, saving the poor worms we disturbed, removing stones, mulching, then re planting the daffs.

Sounds simple but the digging a hauling of bags meant for an excellent upper body work out.\

A lovely email from Naomi this morning.

"Thank you and everyone in the Good Gym team for all the fantastic work you did last night. Everyone was so enthusiastic, friendly and full of energy and it was wonderful to get all the holes dug and the whole bed mulched in such a short space of time".

The Portico Gallery by Tom

"Steel is Real! Last night a band of 12 Goodgymers made their way to West Norwood to be welcomed by everyone’s favourite West Norwooden, John from the Portico Gallery. As always he was on top form and gave us a run down of the task in hand and all the exciting things happening at the gallery over the next week, including a performance from a flying clown (ErictheFred), a lindy Hop tea dance with the guy who choreographed part of the Olympic opening ceremony (the NHS part with the nurses on beds) and the regular community monthly feast. West Norwood continues to confirm its status as a hidden gem in London’s crown.

This week’s tasks as per usual was moving things around the yard, highlights included folding and moving tarpaulin into a neat pile and packing it away nicely, move lots of steel poles into their correct place of rest, moving steel trolleys out of the way and moving a stack of crates onto, and I quote John, “Dry Land”. We also swept it up so it looked as good as new. GoodGym Lambeth have been coming here over the last three weeks and when we first arrived the yard was chocker full of stuff. However over this time we have finally completed the main goal of clearing the whole yard. This as per usual, fits the GoodGym mantra regarding tasks, whereby it now looks in a lot better shape than how we found it. The phrase many hands springs to mind as if this was left to John and a few others it would have taken significantly longer than our three sessions, so all in all cracking stuff. At the end John bade us farewell and wished us all in the GoodGym community a very merry Christmas, top man and top task.

F.Y.I if anyone is interested in what is happening at the portico, here is a link to its website. It’s a fantastic space that has a real community feel, it’s like stepping into a village hall in Wales, definitely a worthwhile browse. http://www.porticogallery.org.uk/"

Holland Park Estate by Jenny.

Another great turn out at Papa's park this week, despite it getting ever colder and darker - good stuff! Before we got going we had a big round of applause for Katie who has hit 100 good deeds, and she and James were presented with their, erm, "prizes," which included some vital 1930s tips on how to be a good husband. Do share, James.

The group split in two for the runs and tasks, although it sounds like all the runners were doing something green-fingered. The faster group ran a total of 4 miles to St Bede's church, where they helped keep the flower beds looking lovely; those of us on the more sedate 2 mile run went to Holland Park Estate and also spent our evening in flowerbeds, pulling up weeds and getting the soil ready for a lot of fresh new plants.

Probably the most impressive feat of the night was Rebecca's bulk buy of a variety of torches for only £11- absolute bargain!

Having been told there would be cake on our return, I definitely ran quicker on the way back- and it didn't disappoint. Thanks Becca and Katie. I'm going to dream about chocolatey pastry goodness tonight. Another fab Tuesday night session- well done everyone!

St Bede's Church By James

Mulch ado about nothing

25 of us mulched our way up to St Bede's Church near Streatham Hill. They'd received a delivery of mulch and needed it spreading on their flowerbeds to release some bacteria-y goodness into the soil. We split into mulch collectors and mulch spreaders and got to task, enjoying the fresh aroma of newly ground mulch. Special mentions go to Elise for her gracious technique of throwing empty mulch buckets over a wall for them to be filled again, and to the various wheel barrowers transporting the mulch from the pile to the beds, many of them runnning while doing so. Once we'd coated the beds in double layers of mulch, we mulched on back down the hill to Papa's park.

MULCH LOVE

Last night around 40 goodgymers said “no deal” to the cold and dark conditions and made their way to Papa’s park for another Goodgym Lambeth session. The elements didn’t put folks off as we had loads of new faces all wanting to get involved, cracking stuff. Before we set off we gave James a big round of applause for completing over 100 good deeds, James is one of the original members of GoodGym Lambeth and is an all-round top guy and between visiting his Coach Keith and pounding the streets of Lambeth he has amassed many a mile and more importantly contributed loads to local projects and tasks have we done in Lambeth, well played sir, well played.

After the introductions we all ran around 2 km to Myatts field to meet Guy from Streetscape. Streetscape is a great local project that gets young people into employment through learning horticulture skills, as they are busy learning new skills their yard often gets cluttered with bits of woods from jobs they have done and that is where we came in tonight.

As some of us arrived slightly early we did a lap of the park only to be welcomed by the rest of the group forming a human tunnel to welcome us in (I bloody loved that by the way!!). Then split into two groups one with Rebecca and one on the task. The task was simply to get all the off cuts of wood in the yard and load it into the truck. Now a big shout out goes to John Hunter who did his best impression of a lamppost by shining a light on us throughout the task and was vital so we could see what we were picking up and helped loading it in the van. At first the pile of wood looks pretty daunting however in true goodgym style we packed it to the rafters and managed to get it all in there. We even had some time spare to load some bits of fence and even a bench, which was expertly shoved in by Guy at the end.

Half way through the groups swapped and the non-task group were faced with Rebecca’s circuits. Now I don’t know about you but my legs have certainly been feeling it today. This was because we were put through our paces by doing 25 squats and burpees followed by 20 lunges on each side, we did three sets of these reducing each by 5 each time and at the end to mix it up we did another lap of the park. In a word ouch (but a good ouch none the less.

Safe to say by the time we made it back I was spent however Sarah’s homemade millionaire shortbread that welcomed us back was a definite great way to end another cracking Tuesday night.

Tom