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!

30 amazing people joined me in Camden as we headed to Antrim Grove allotments for the last time this year and ran over 7km too!

We welcomed first time runners Niamh and Rosie Y and talked GoodGym's 10th birthday plans as well as the usual health and safety and general intro!

With that done and much bug spray sprayed we split into two groups with Rosie A leading the more keen runners and myself taking the more sedate group. We took different routes but ended up at Antrim not too far apart. We were split out into various task from weeding, to digging, to chopping and the remainder joined Kat outside to do some conditioning exercises!

With the light fading fast we swapped people over to do the fitness work and before we knew it it was 8pm and time to head back. We posed for a group photo in the dark (turns out my camera's night mode is terrible) and then we said our goodbyes. We split the group again but both took the same route, Rosie A leading a primrose hill posse and me taking the rest around the hill. Once back to base we stretched and then some headed to the pub and others home.

Next week we are celebrating 10 years of goodgym - there will be cake!

Cheers,
Pritesh

57 GoodGymers ran 6km to help Kentish Town City Farm, broke the Camden Attendance Record and I said farewell to you wonderful people!

On my first Wednesday living in London back in May 2014 I enjoyed GoodGym Camden, I found a welcoming community of runners who were like minded people. I was honoured to become your trainer in January 2016, something that's always been more than a job to me. It's a passion; to bring people together, learn about our bodies, help the communities we live/work in and then go to the pub afterwards. You guys are the best!

Thank you so much for last night, the amazing group of you that came in the rain to say goodbye (and hug the goats) and for such wonderful presents.

Okay back to the normal report... welcome along to the newbies Lisa and Xanthy - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. A huge well done to GG sisters Kat Kelly and Liz Pang for hitting 100 good deeds, I am privileged to call them my friends and proud of what they've achieved at GoodGym Camden over the last 3+ years.
2. Go along to CREOS Community Mission in Islington this Sunday - it's a great one that ends with a free picnic!
3. So I have two races planned that I'd love for you to be apart of - Rother Valley Running Festival (near Sheffield) on 16th November. Also we'll be going to Kiev in May 2020 for the next #GGxEuro Trip! More details about both coming soon.

Corrr blimey there was so many of you! Such a big group, in fact such a big group that we broke the Camden Group Run Attendance Record and were just a few people short of breaking the GG World Record. Next time.

For the run up there we formed two groups of 25-30 people, with brilliant Run Leaders and Taskforce Peeps leading, middlemarking (cheers Steve) and backmarking each one - thanks to Abi, Kat, Chris, Aidan, Patrick, Steve C, Frances, Rosie and James for all there help leading groups through the wet streets of Camden. Meanwhile Mr Lee and I formed good-cycle again and helped direct at various points along the 3k route.

Ciao now Bown cow

Upon our arrival at Kentish Town City Farm Mel told us the brilliant news about the mean old trustee board had been removed, new guys had come in place and £100,000 being donated by a very kind donor. The farm has been saved, a hollywood ending! Then she set us to work with four tasks:

• Three people collected up debris in the goat area
• Twenty-Five people removed old decking from around the pond, and then chain ganged it all the way down to the bin at the bottom of the farm.
• Fifteen people shovelled muck, bagging it up and re-piled it
• Finally thirteen people racked and evened out the ground up at the Arena

The farm was full of activity for 30 minutes, we got so much done and Mel was really pleased! Thanks for working so hard in the rain, muck and more. Next it was GOAT TIME - we hugged them, said hey to little Rosie and fed them - all the fun! After a special group photo we headed back to base for stretches and then onto to pizza + beer! Thanks for Kat, Rosie etc for organising that!

Bown-ding into the future

What a special evening to end a special time for me personally at GoodGym ( both Camden and Islington). As I said last night I started without a beard and not really knowing what was up, the community that is GoodGym has enabled me to grow into who I am today. Thank you so much for the fantastic presents, the messages, the individual farewells and for just being you. You guys are my family, I love you and I'm going to miss you so much!

See you at a GoodGym Event sometime soon!

PB over and out for the final time.

35 GoodGymers ran 4-6km to help Story Garden & Coram Fields - woop woop!

Another awesome week but unfortunately my penultimate week, I hope you can make my final run next week and the beers & pizza afterwards! Waaaaah!

Welcome along to newbies Lydia, Kenny, Emma, George and Lynton.

In the news this week:

1. Go along to the social tonight on the Southbank! Pritesh will be there chatting all the good - more details here.
2. August's long run is going to be led by Simon Fitzmaurice, starting on Greenwich High Street, and finishing in the Olympic Park, Stratford - 10km or 25k options. Sign up here
3. Well done to Hayley who did the Ride 100 on Sunday - awesome! Plus big up to all the Camdenites and GoodGymers who had lots of fun at the GG Olympics on Saturday - yay!
4. Last thing - join the Unoffical GoodGym Facebook Group here and the GG Camden FB group here.

Corrrr what a fun evening of good, time trials, woodchip and 35 people! Nice! We split into two teams, with Frances (Loves a Mission) Powrie leading a group of 20 people to help the wonderful Coram Fields, which is the largest playground in central London. They'd just had there BIG Play Day so our task was to pack up after that and then sweep up debris, leaves, moss and anything else that's around. Great!

Moss Bros

Meanwhile I led a team of 14 team to help the Story Garden, which is right next door to the Crick Institute. We've been helping this community garden grow and develop over the last three months and it's really blossomed into a brilliant space. Martina said we have been 'instrumental to the garden's opening and growth!' We were split into four teams:

• Scraping away woodchip under planks of wood to make a disabled access pathway
• Litter picking around the entrance!
• Shifting woodchip into uncovered areas near some of the newly constructed buildings
• Filling up planters with soil in the pollytunnel

After 30 minutes we were done and Martina was very pleased! Pritesh led a group on a canal run to Granary Square, meanwhile Frances run her group over from Coram Fields to the same meeting spot. We all met there played on the minute for a minute and then did my final time trial with you awesome people. Hanry broke the record with 2.42 (course was 50+ metres longer)!

After a good stretch we went to the pub with drinks and fun. Lovely jubbley.

Sign up for next week here when we'll be helping Kentish Town City Farm!

PB out.