Lambeth News

• Saturday is the first Cross Country fixture of the year! Mud, fun running and beer (afterwards). What's not to like! If you're part of the GoodGym RaceTeam we need you at Claybury. Sign up here.

• The October long run will be 19.3km along the Capital ring - East Finchley to Hackney Wick. Get some kms in with goodgym cheer and food after! Sign up here.

• Hello and welcome to Lisa and Jessica who joined us for the first time last night!

• Next week Katie is back and there'll be two tasks again - one to spread woodchip at Brixton Orchard and one to finish off digging at Clapham Common. Sign up here.

That's enough of the business

Two tasks go to war

Last night we split into two, one group headed the 1km to Wyck Gardens, one headed the longer 4km to Crisis in Elephant and Castle.

Here's what happened at Wyck Gardens, in the words of Beth Hoskins:

We planted about 10 plants which was a multi-step process: Dig a hole, put some compost in the hole, put the plant in, more compost, water, put cardboard on top (to stop the weeds), cover with woodchip, water some more. Done.

A tidy job!

Group number two had various jobs to do at Crisis - sorting DVDs, organising bookshelves, tagging and hanging donations, steaming new donations, hoovering, mopping, dusting and cleaning. Blimey! We swarmed in full of enthusiasm and Jordon got us to work. We very nearly finished tagging a huge pile of donations, got over halfway through the DVD box (there are some corkers in there, I highly recommend a visit!) and had the floors squeaky clean (although some of us accidentally walked over the freshly mopped floors on our way out...woops!). One group was sent back at 20.00 at a more leisurely pace and five(ish) minutes later the rest of the group set off at a speedy pace. We finished the run with a game of chase the hare. George was our hare and didn't get caught! Next time I won't give you so much of a head start...!

After a stretch we all indulged in this week's baked goods - biscuits and welsh snails (don't ask).

Thank you for having me Lambeth it was a blast!

Lucy J

The first week of October meant it was proper dark when we started our run and even darker when we finished! Luckily, we had two great tasks to get on with and everyone was super up for it.

A smaller group led by JKB headed back to the Tulse Hill Estate, where task owner Vinnie and his barky dog had three jobs that needed our attention. One group sorted out a compost heap that was a right mess, another moved a big old load of soil whilst group 3 moved a load of soil. You could say it was an evening of MOVING for this team but boy did they do well. Shout outs to Andrew and Rebecca who stayed behind to tidy up at the end. TOP STUFF.

WOOF! WOOF! Said the dog.

The rest headed to the fantastic Grove Adventure Playground, which is 1km away. For those wanting a longer run, Tom H led a group 3.5km round the houses. Once there, some people set about digging holes in the ground to plant some grasses that were from the Chelsea Flower Show don't you know. It turns out this was much harder than it seemed as chunks of concrete were awaiting us below the surface. After some serious perseverance all grasses got planted, which task owner Anthea was very impressed by. Another group filled up a flower bed with soil and the rest set about some serious weeding of flower beds out the front and also between the paving out the back. Even more people swept and mopped the floor inside. All in all, we got loads done and one tool was like a broom but had a tiny head on the end and we thought it was like a giant's toothbrush. So that was fun.

It's like a giant's toothbrush! Said Freyja.

On return to base, we tucked into some delicious biscuits and some cake that had candles on it as it was Katie's (that's me!) birthday so that was very nice. THANKS LAMBETH!

Hello Lambeth!

THIRTY THREE of you amazing people joined me in Lambeth last night as we helped two organisations, ran a combined 236km, gave out a shit prize and unfortunately failed again to produce cake!

In the news this week:

• A big Lambeth welcome to Hannah who joined us for her first GoodGym run.
• Hearty congratulations to artist extraordinaire Tim for winning shit prize of the month for his dedication in both running and drawing and for generally being an all round awesome bloke.
• Don’t forget the GoodGym-wide social is next Thursday in Angel and if you’re a Libra then this is the social for you!
• Fancy volunteering at a race – check out the Shoreditch 10k on the 14th October – perks included!

And finally a big thank you to the TaskForce and to everyone for helping me out and being such a great crowd to lead and run with! On to the night:

We had two tasks – revisiting the work at Clapham Common for Colour your Common and heading up to St Michael’s Fellowship to sort through some charitable donations.

Thank you to Tom, Nicky and Vix who were in charge of the St Michael's Fellowship group. Words from Tom:

We ran 4km up Streatham Hill to help St. Michael’s Fellowship. An amazing charity who work to break cycles of disadvantage so that children may lead more healthy and confident lives.

We were met by the lovely Hillary and team. Who informed us that our task was to sort donations of all shapes and sizes of baby clothes into seasonably appropriate packages for Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter wear.

This required a great deal of curation and attention to detail from the team. With lots of spirited debate over colour clashes, gendered onesies and whether it’s ever appropriate to wear socks with sandals.

With so many donations to sort through, the scale of the task was too much for one night’s work. But we hope to return soon in some form to help with the great work St. Michael’s are doing.

The rest of us headed up to Clapham Common, a shorter run but a much more physical task. Thanks to Frances, George, Jim and John for guidance and back-marking. Here’s our report:

Wanting to avoid the traffic of Clapham High Street we headed on a slightly different route but ably led by Frances, George and Jim we made our way to the common with no problems. There we were greeted with much darkness and also Adrian and David who were getting out various tools for the task. We split in to two groups, ‘Turfers’ and ‘Turners’. The Turfers worked on a specific area cutting the turf from the soil. A precise and tough job given the ground was still very firm. The Turners worked on an area that had previously been removed of turf and slowly but surely turned and broke up the soil working carefully to ensure that the ground they turned wasn’t trodden on or compacted. With various lights and headtorches being used it made for quite the eerie scene. After 25 minutes hard work it was time to go, I think packing up may have been the hardest part of the night particularly the travails of the wheelbarrow with a flat tyre! In any case all was put away and all that was left was for us to run back to Papa’s!

Thank you to Frances who led the stretch at the end of the evening and thanks again to everyone for a wonderful night in Lambeth - I’ll be sure to come back if I get the chance! Katie is back next week so do sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh