A whopping 35 runners trooped out of St Pancras & Somers Living Centre on Wednesday night to get out and do some good in Camden.

We had two newbies join the herd - welcome Collette and Katie - as well as TWO big celebrations of the milestone variety:

Becs (as in the Rebecca Clarke, GoodGym Media and Comms extraordinaire) reached her 50 Good Deeds milestone tonight and Laura Lambert hit 100 Good Deeds! Stop reading right now and go and give them a cheer! Well done to you both. Big milestones deserve cake baked by Liz, but more on that later.

As normal, the team split with 10 runners going with John to C4WS and the rest of the rabble coming with me to see Helen in the Camden Scope shop on the high street.

C4WS Report (by John)

A group of 11 threaded their way through the crowded streets of St Pancras and Bloomsbury, avoiding swiftly opened van doors on the way, for our 12th visit this winter to the homeless people's shelter at the American International Church. We knew the routine by now, setting up a human chain to move sheets, mattresses and other bedding from a storage area to the warm area where less fortunate Londoners can spend a night away from the streets and enjoy a hot meal in comfort. In a few minutes we achieved what would have taken an hour for the busy helpers in the church. Afterwards we jogged back to Granary Square for a fitness session: three laps round St Martin's School of Art at a steadily increasing pace, before a relaxing warm-down on the swivel chairs at Coal Drops Yard.

Scope Report

23 of us arrived to Helen's Scope shop in Camden high street, ready to get stuck in. A queue formed and our very drilled taskmaster handed out the jobs to the waiting teams. Jewellery needed sorting and pricing, mannequins needed re-dressing (by the GoodGym visual merchandising team - "Sorry if it's 'Devil Wears Prada' but I think we need a belt here."), shoes needed polishing, donations needed sorted (and steaming) and the upstairs office needed an early spring clean. So many jobs and so little time, but we managed to do them all and boy did that place shine as we left.

By the time both teams got back to base, it was time for blondies and fudge (both made my the inimitable Liz!) to celebrate the two big Good Deed milestones. Liz's recipe for the delicious blondies are at the bottom of the report if you'd like to try at home.

NEXT TIME

COMMUNITY MISSIONS AHOY: There's not one but TWO plogging Community Missions today - one at 1pm at Red Lion Square Gardens and the other is Glebelands Wood Nature Reserve from 4:45-5:20pm! Let's beat Lambeth to be the top scoring London GoodGym in the January Challenge. We can do it!

NEXT GROUP RUN: It's official, we're going back to Alara Wholefoods and there'll be a box of granola in it for every runner after you've helped shift some manure, tidy up the pond and do some weeding. A smaller group of us will be heading back to C4WS to make the beds again. It's going to be a brilliant night whichever task you choose.

Liz's Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies:

Ingredients

125 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

100 g butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

150 g crunchy peanut butter

175 g light brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

100 g white chocolate, chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas 3. Butter the sides of a 20 x 20cm square cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper.

2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a small bowl and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and peanut butter together until very soft. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined. Add the flour, baking powder and the chopped chocolate and mix to form a dough.

4. Place the dough into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes, or until golden brown and almost firm in the centre.

5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin, before removing and cutting into squares.

6. Eat!

Some would say that running through the dark, cold streets so close to Halloween isn't for the faint (or should we say paint) hearted, but 19 runners weren't deterred and came out to support Impact Theatre by giving their corridors a fresh lick of paint!

In the mix we had Elizabeth joining us for her first GoodGym run and a massive cheer to Chris for leading the speedsters at the front and Alex and Harvey for some excellent back marking and ensuring everyone arrived at the task safely.

Biggest cheer of the night goes to Lionel who worked with the theatre earlier in the day to get everything set up for when we arrived, this meant the task went smoothly and we were able to make the biggest IMPACT possible in the time we had!

We kicked off the run with a little warm up while chatting about all our favourite Halloween films, Hocus Pocus, The Babadook, Halloween (obvs) and The Nightmare before Christmas (does it count?!) all made the list. A quick head count and we were off taking in Ealings finest undulations en route before running through the surprisingly well lit park as a group. We were met at the theatre by Peter who gave us a low down of all the amazing things happening at the theatre and how they aim to promote a positive image of disability and to develop communication and self-confidence, through participation in performing and creative arts.

Save our soles!

With the task nicely set up we were raring to go and set to work with brushes and rollers working in teams to cut in around the doors and roll in between. A military style operation, we even had sweepers going through mopping up any spills to ensure our soles stayed paint free and stopped any accidental spreading to the rest of the building!

A little snippet of the @goodgym gang from Ealing in action last night at Impact Theatre in Perivale. A task not for the paint hearted! pic.twitter.com/mO8pPYVMMZ

— GoodGym Ealing (@GGEaling) October 30, 2019

There was a theatrical display of limbs in motion over nooks and crannies and in just half an hour the whole corridor had been covered. Operation clear up happened with thanks to Phill, Jenni and Lionel for their extra efforts to ensure all the brushes, rollers and trays were good cleaned well enough for future use!

Great effort team, a scarily good job by everyone involved!

16 runners ran to help Ealing Foodbank during their busiest time of year, harvest!

This Thursday is World Mental Health Day so we kicked off the session by getting everyone to go around and say hello to someone new. Sometimes a chat with a stranger and getting outside for a run and chat can be incredibly uplifting. Keeping physically active can have a huge benefit for those experiencing mental health problems and here at GoodGym Ealing we’re all about running, talking and sharing experiences.

Lots of us had donations to bring down to the centre last night so after a quick warm up off we ran into the night armed with jars of peanut butter, cans of sweetcorn and packets of nappies (all things on Ealing Foodbanks most needed list for this month). After a lovely run in the cool autumnal air avoiding the big puddles from the earlier downpour we arrived to meet Hilary who was armed with a long list of jobs for us.

• Weighing donations - everything that comes in is weighed and logged so they know exactly how much and who has donated
• Unpacking donations - So many beans!
• Heading out to help buy as many nappies as possible - They have a budget to buy much needed items they are short on and nappies is always on the list
• Putting donations on the right shelves - they have a great storage system all sorted by date!
• Cleaning the centre, something really helpful for the staff here so they can focus on all the super important jobs
• Shredding - there’s always lots of this!
• And lastly a litter pick around the building, it’s sadly a hotspot for people throwing litter over the fence

We split ourselves up all mixing jobs throughout the night and getting stuck in wherever we could. Harvest time brings in the most donations of the whole year so we weren’t short on things to do and worked right up until the last minute!

It’s my favourite task as I know exactly who and how it’s going to help!

This is a favourite task of so many of the group and it’s great to see the amount of donations they receive but it’s always very sad to know this is still such a needed service. I’m glad GoodGym Ealing are able to play a small part in helping it run smoothly.

'We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us'

Hear, hear! Last night's run was in partnership with The Great Get Together as are all of this week's GoodGym sessions across the country. It is an initiative founded by the family and friends of Jo Cox who was killed on 16 June 2016 and was created to reject divisive politics and bring our communities together and celebrate all that unites us.

Last night we used our run to celebrate kindness, respect and all we have in common! #moreincommon

16 of us were not put off the day's earlier biblical downpour and successfully dodged the rain for our evening run, we meandered through the parks to help The Ealing Transition Community Orchard tackle the brambles!

After collecting tools en route we wheelbarrowed our way to meet Grant who helps manage the garden and had a thorny issue for us to take on...

Getting to the root of the thorny issue...

Our instructions were clear, all brambles out, everything else in! So we quickly got to work snipping away the brambles in amongst the wildflowers as close to the root as possible to prevent them shooting up again too quickly. Some of us even went as far as pulling out the whole root entirely!

GoodGym 1 - 0 Brambles!

As the task is a lovely short run away we got lots snipping time this evening so after 40 minutes (and a few scratches!) the garden was a much less spikey place to be. We finished up by wheelbarrowing the tools back to the shed and stopping off in Walpole park for a round of sprints and squats. We had one group of power walkers and one group of sprinters, both equally hard at full effort! By the time we were done everyone was very out of breathe, great job all round!

With all that done and dusted we'd built up an appetite but with the earlier rain we called off our picnic and headed for a pubnic instead!.We all shared food, had some drinks and celebrated all we have in common. What a wonderful way to share an evening!