Tonight 31 runners ran around 3 km to paint, water, weed, dig, plant and celebrate!

It’s been 3 glorious good deed filled years since GoodGym Croydon launched and headed off to Croydon Arena in South Norwood. For this special day I decided to be a little bit less ambitious about the length of the run and head off to one of our favourite task venues – Park Hill Rec Community Garden. As it was our special birthday we asked Councillor Lousia Woodley, who had launched us 3 years ago, to come along and send us on our way. Councillor Oliver Lewis also joined us for the send off and headed up to the garden with us for some hard graft. It may have been the thought of the amazing cake that did it!

It was a beautiful sunny evening – just as it should be for a birthday – so after waving goodbye to Louisa we headed off to Park Hill to meet Catherine and Erica who had a list of jobs for us including mural painting, weeding, digging, planting and watering. I think they were a little surprised by the sheer numbers but quickly made use of the enthusiasm and work rate of 31 Goodgymers. Catherine, Erica and Josi had also kindly bought us some bedding plants for our section of the Peace Garden so we will be back to check how they are flourishing.

The time flew by and before we knew it the drinks, snacks and THE CAKE were brought out. Huge thanks go to Rachel for her amazing creation – looked too good to eat but we managed and didn’t leave a crumb. Some runners, not going to name them, even managed 2 slices! There should have been a fitness session however we decided to spend a bit more time in the garden and painting and cake eating and strangely enough nobody objected!

There have been some thefts recently at the Community Garden so earlier in the week we had a collection for some B&Q vouchers so the lovely Friends Group could replace the plants that were taken.

We also welcomed three new runners tonight, Oliver, Karen and Sara - hope you all enjoyed yourselves and see you back again soon.

To finish off our celebrations some of us headed off to the Porter and Sorter for a quick drink or burger and had a great time plotting our next races including the Dino Dash in June and also helping out GoodGym Bromley with the South Norwood takeover at the end of the month. There are also lots of GoodGymers heading off to the London 10K on the 27th of May so if you are going sign-up here and don't forget to wear your t-shirt. Conroy also told the group about the GoodGym Olympics coming up soon and the challenge of writing a Croydon anthem – let’s see what we can do!

Finally, a big thanks to Conroy for letting me take over tonight - I'll be asking for the 4th birthday run too if that's okay!

Next week’s run will be off to a the Peppermint Centre so don’t forget to sign up!

This afternoon we helped prepare an area for bee friendly plants

This Bank Holiday afternoon we met at Heathfield House and Gardens to help our buzzy busy friends. Bees are under threat globally and today we were doing our bit locally by helping weed and dig over a large flowerbed so bee friendly plants could be grown there later in the year by the Heathfield Ecology Centre. It was a hot and humid day but we got down to business and weeded, pulled and cleared the weeds up – hopefully no plants were collateral damage! While we were working an outdoor play was being set up as part of the Open Day all about the lives of insects – it was a bit drzzly by the time it started but as it was a Bank Holiday and we all know they usually mean rain then most of the audience had umbrellas with them!

After we’d finished we had a short but scenic run through the local woods – a bit of a change from the pavements we normally pound on Tuesdays evenings. We even had a bit of excitement when I misdirected Helena and we ended up in a stable yard with a dog bounding towards us – apparently he had no teeth so we would have been safe enough!

The Starter sessions are to introduce new runners to GoodGym and give them a chance to see what we do and also to tell them about Coach run and Missions. So we were happy to welcome Sam and Alex to the GoodGym crew where they were able to chat to the regular runners – it was great to meet you all and hope to see you again soon. Welcome also to Helena who’d popped in on her trip home from Brighton and to Paul all the way from Bristol.

This Tuesday’s run we will be helping a local community group, East Croydon Community Organisation clear some unruly ivy and some other stubborn weeds to help them with their longer term plans to improve the local environment by replanting the overgrown beds

For today’s Starter session we ran between 3 and 4km after helping restore the Brownies’ Millennial Garden in Shirley.

Today was a Starter session to give those who haven’t experienced a GoodGym task a taste of what GoodGym is all about and what we can achieve in a short space of time. We started at All Saints Church Hall in Bridle Road, Shirley where we met Brown Owl Christina and her husband Bert. She explained the background to the task and what we needed to do.

At the turn of the millennium some funding was given to create a couple of raised beds which were planted and maintained by the Brownies and there was also a commemorative wooden bench put in place so they could sit and admire the garden. However, over the years the grass and weeds took over the flower beds and the bench became worse for wear. Our task was to help restore the beds by weeding, mowing the grass and re-digging the four circles used for planting – Christina cunningly brought hula hoops to use as a template. The bench also had to be rejuvenated by sanding it down and adding a few coats of varnish. We were determined to finish the task to make sure the Brownies could get planting this Tuesday so we did stay a little longer but were kept well fuelled with juice and biscuits by Christina – thanks for that!

Once the job was done we headed off for a 30 minute run through the local streets before heading to Millers Pond where we did some work on leg strength and balance with lunges, squats, one-legged squats and hip flexor stretches. Thanks to Simon for demonstrating the lunges – not a wobble in sight!

We had one new member today so welcome to Jamie and also thanks to his brother Alex who helped him out. We were also joined by two regular GoodGymers – "Karate Kid" Simon who is the Islington Trainer and Beth who seems to have been to most of the London GoodGym runs. It was great to see Sam, Anna, Thandi and Neil give up their Saturday long-lies to join us again.

This Tuesday evening we will be litter picking in central Croydon while the Pearl Izumi Tour series (cycling) is happening in Croydon so we’ll get the best of all worlds; a run, some drills, a good deed and a chance to watch some super speedy cyclists in lycra. We will finish at our normal time of 8.30pm which will give you enough time to head back if you want to see the final laps and see the winning cyclists.