A team of 4 (Simon, Abi and John and Jackie Shirley) attended our weekly deep clean at The Arc Centre community hub. It's a lovely task, hosted by volunteer coordinator Damien, where we set up a main hall and kitchen space, and get it ready to receive food deliveries for local families.

Three of our crew have contributed to this task before, so we knew how to get cracking! Firstly, we shifted all of the donated produce (loads of new items!) out of the two rooms to leave us enough space to clean up. Abi and Simon swept the floors, whilst John and Jackie mopped, and we all attacked the kitchen area with surface cleaner to ensure peak hygiene standards.

A very satisfying task, always great to work efficiently towards a well accomplished outcome.

October, 9 runners, a grey morning, a sunny day, some talking to do and some litter to pick.

We met up for a #runandtalk session on what started as a sunny evening and soon dropped down a wet and somewhat wintery session. After a bit of a task let down, we jogged around the Rye getting nice and warmed up whilst welcoming Ellen to her first ever GoodGym experience.

Then it was into teams, gloves on, black bin bags in hand and a direction each to go in to litter pick. The idea being to clean up the area where we live as well as have a chance to chat to each other.

Shoes, balls and cans later, we rendezvoused and it was time for our regular time trial. 720 metres against ourselves. There's a regular route we use and we had already recce'd it during our warm up. Amazing first effort for some and repeat effort for others.

EVERYONE matched or bettered their time

Time to work you harder, and that we did....

5 exercises as the heavens opened. Did someone say #nationalburpeeday? Burpees, mountain climbers, complete abs, squat jumps and planks climbs... 10 of each, 9 of each, 8 of each.... I could go on but it'll seem never-ending. You get the idea and everyone kept each other going. Despite the burn, despite the sweat and the rain.

Such an amazing effort could only be rewarded with... a gentle jog home. We stretched off, we dried off and washed our hands clean of anything untoward.

Running, doing good, having a chat and getting fit check.

28 GoodGymers ran 5km, did some fitness drills and shifted 3 tons of soil!

In the news this week we talked about GG monthly drinks next Thursday and had a Race Chat focus with New Forest 10 Miler, Regents Park 10km (August Edition) and Cardiff Half Marathon in October. Well done GG Camden taskforce for leading on these races!

Mr. Horse himself Tom Benson has written the run report this week:

Last night we returned to an old Camden GoodGym stomping ground. My major dilemma before the run was whether to take a jacket or not as the conditions on the ride up were keeping their cards close to their chest, would it be too cold, rainy, I won’t lie I just couldn’t tell. However I took the solid advice of Megan and I’m pleased I ditched the jacket as we had quite a work out.

Major dilemma

Aside from my clothing dilemma, the task in hand was returning after a long absence to James Wiggs GP practice, where we were tasked with the following; we had three one ton bags of soil that needed shifting, small tree roots needed pulling up and a strange grass like weed that had appeared to have embedded in the soil needed putting back in its place (basically needed pulling out). In short we were clearing a space in their garden as they wanted to transform the current space into a sensory garden for the patients to come and use, lovely stuff.

Everybody's shovelling!

Melissa, from Free Space Gallery was there to give us a warm welcome and armed us with spades, forks, gloves and wheelbarrows to get the job done. As there were quite a few bodies we split into two groups one going off with Paul to do some drills while the others got on with the task. In true GoodGym style there was no messing about and straight down to business, and once both teams had completed the drills we still had some soil to shift.

Hats off to newcomers Bernard and Andre who were on shovelling soil duty and kept the soil coming to ensure we got it all shifted, well done everybody. Just before we completed the one and half mile run home, Melissa showed us a space that 2 years ago GoodGym Camden came for a task which we dug up and made ready for planting. In the two years that followed the foundations we laid have allowed the space to turn into a lovely garden for the Practice.

Liv Rowe's Yoga Stretch of the week!

On our return Liv gave us another cracking set of Yoga stretches to help us warm down. Afterwards a gaggle of us found time to sink a jar or two in the local boozer and talk about many things including combining normal potato chips with sweet potato fries for the ultimate pack of frozen chips - McCain's Sweet and Plain* (it’s like a chip version of sweet and salted popcorn, it’s a winner I tell you…..happy trays). *Other frozen potato providers are available

Next week we are painting fences for Kentish Town Tenants Association and helping Skip Garden with various tasks, sign up here!

PB out.