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.

29 Goodgymers ran 3-5km to help C4WS and Coram Fields - lovely double tasks!

Welcome along to newbies - Safiah, Maeve, James, Nastia and Miranda - wonderful to have you along.

In the news this week:

1. Well done who did the community mission at Antrim Allotments on Sunday, there might be another one next month.
2. Good luck to do those doing the Monsail Trail Races this weekend. Check out other Goodgym races here.

This week we had two wonderful tasks - Coram Fields and C4WS. Both amazing local Camden charities.

Coram Fields Report by PB:

Heading in the same direction as the other group until just after Euston Road, we then headed to Coram Fields - accessing it the back way via the football pitches. Making sure we dodge any flying balls and rugby players as we walked through their practice!

Coram Fields is a 4 acre playground that keeps the local kids happy! Our task was twofold:

• A group of seven raked the sand pit, swept the wooden surfaces and collected rubbish and debris.
• The second team collected up moss, leaves, twigs and rubbish from the central playground area. Filling 10 bags!

After 35 minutes of hard work we were done, we headed to Russell Square for a fitness session - some conditioning and a fast lap around the square! Nice!

Double Trouble

C4WS Report by Katie:

With a 12-strong team, one group headed off to CW4S to make some beds for the penultimate time this year.

With the tricky task of traversing Camden to get to Tottenham Court Road, we set off well but soon ended up taking a wrong turn down what surely must be Camden’s only cul-de-sac (swear it wasn’t there before - must be some Harry Potter magic given its proximity to Platform 9 & 3/4), but arrived just in the nick of time to join the walking party at the task location and get 12 beds made in what felt like record time (don’t think anyone actually timed it, but we agreed it felt pretty swift!).

It was great to be greeted by our contact at the shelter again, who tells us about the good we do and makes sure we know how important Goodgym is to the organisation!

After the quick turnaround with the task, off we took again, this time bound for Russell Square and a fitness session. There was a delightful (if rather unexpected) variation to the usual route with an accidental detour through the university on our way... oops again... but a nice chilled session with some running, jogging and walking pace laps of the square, with Hayley leading some great strength training exercises before we headed back to base. We unfortunately narrowly missed the Coram Fields group at the Square, but fitted in a few flying high-fives outside the tube station as we passed like runners in the night!

Sign up for next week here when we'll be helping SPCA and C4WS (last time this year).

PB out

23 Goodgymers ran 3-6km to help Sheltered Housing and Coram Fields with some Autumnal work

Thanks for coming guys and a huge thanks to Hanry the Founder of Lunar Cycles, in Kentish Town, for providing us with headtorches! Welcome along to Grace Gillis aka GG to her first GoodGym run.

In the news this week:

1. The Monthly Social is in Angel on Thursday 4th October at the Islington Townhouse - come along - full details here.
2. Frances Powrie is now the Chair of the GG Raceteam and Pritesh Mistry is the Secretary. We are looking for race suggestions for 2019 to make into our Big Races - please submit here.
3. Read all about where your GG t-shirts come from here - the fantastic Camden Society!

We had two tasks to tackle last night, regulars Coram Fields and Sheltered Housing - both awesome charities!

Sheltered Housing Report:

Chris and Kat led the group up to Kentish Town to help the fantastic Sheltered housing, a charity that provides care and support for older people. The garden which we help look after is invaluable to the residents!

The tasks were as followed:

• Frances, Chris and Abi built some shelves for grow bags to go on.
• Jess and Pritesh pruned a tree
• The rest of the group swept and collected leaves (8 bags worth)

Completing a wonderful 6km the majority of the team headed to the pub for a beer.

Coram Fields Report:

The rest of the group headed to the fantastic Coram Fields, a 7 acre children's playground that has over 40 trees! The task was simple and the group effective - to collect and bag up leaves.

Headtorch time!

Splitting into teams of 3-4 people we covered the paddling pool, adventure play area and lawn. Collecting in total an amazing 35 bags of leaves! Wow! We then headed to Russell Square for a fitness session, with some of the group doing a parlauf and the other focusing on calves and balancing.

Next week we are off to help St Mary's and another task (tbc) - sign up here.

PB out

22 DMCS ran 5.8km to help Coram Fields collect up 58 bags of leaves!

Thank you for coming along to the GoodGym×DMCS Run - there was a massive 22 of us!

A bit about GoodGym, our mission is to help our communities with physical tasks and reduce loneliness through projects with older persons. There are three ways of doing good with us:

1. First way is a group run, which you went on last night. As a group we meet in 45 areas around the UK on a weekly basis, we run to local charity do something physical for 30 minutes and run back.
2. Missions - these are one off and happen with 2-4 people, the idea is to help older persons in their home with something like setting up a hospital bed, moving furniture or gardening.
3. Coach Running - this is where you go visit an old isolated person once a week to have a chat and keep them company.

Back to what we did last night, after a quick warm up we headed along the river for some park running before heading north to the Strand and passed the busy Holborn station.

After a steady 3k run we arrived at Coram Fields, a 7 acre space which provides activities and space for young people. We met the wonderful Operations Manager Heng who told us our task for the evening was to clear and collect as many leaves as possible. With over 40 trees on the plot there is always going to be lots to do at this time of year.

Splitting into teams of 2-3 people we spread out and covered as much area as possible. While one person swept up small and large piles of leaves and then another collected them in bin bags.

All the leaves!

Over the course of 30 minutes everyone worked really hard - collecting a huge 58 bags of leaves - that's over 11 hours work for one person - amazing!

After taking a group picture we headed south and downhill home, dodging commuters and racing through the parks.

Find out what your local GoodGym is on the website, your closest are Westminster on a Wednesday meeting at the New Balance Store on Oxford Street or Camden also meeting on Wednesdays near St Pancras.

PB out

23 Goodgymers ran 5km and helped Coram Fields with some leaf clearance fun!

Welcome along to Tom and Jordi whose first time it was last night - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

• Katherine hit 50 good deeds! Well done to this wonderful taskforce member and good deeder - thanks to Liz for making the cakes in celebration.
• Well done to everyone who took part in the East Farm Races at the weekend - good work! Find more races here.
• September's social - Hamlingslow - is next Thursday in Hammersmith - it's gonna be great - more details here.
• GoodGym Raceteam are taking part in the London Met Cross Country Season - we'd love you join! You'll need to join the raceteam, see here.
• Last thing, GoodGym are taking over Peckham Rye Parkrun next Saturday (8th September) to volunteer, pace and generally be #RedThunder. There are pacing slots still free if you are up for it - more details here.

After an early intro and a quick warm up we headed to Coram Fields to make the 19.10 deadline, upon arrival we met Noel (Head Groundsman). He set us to work with clearing the leaves in the Wildlife Reserve (we couldn't go in too deep as the bee's were polluting) and we also concentrated on the quads. This 7-acre community space is a unique oasis in the middle of London, used by children and young people in the local area and visiting in London. The charity really relies on volunteers to survive - making us very important!

Leaf it out!

Using rakes, brooms, scrops and bags we collected up mountains of leaves (filling 7 bags) and clearing up the sandpit area - nice! After the group run we headed to Russell Square for some fitness fun! Set out into three parts:

1. Conditoning Game (5 sets) - on the minute for the minute - x5 star jumps, x5 press ups, x5 squats and x2 squat jumps!
2. Progression running - getting faster on each corner of the square.
3. Relay Time - a close battle of 5 teams of 4 but Pritesh's team won!

After all the evenings excitement we headed to the the pub to eat cake and cheers Katherine's 50th!

Sign up next week here when we'll be sorting donations for Scope Charity Shop.

PB out

31 Goodgymers ran 5km and cleared five HUGE bags of leaves and debris for Coram Fields

Welcome to newbies - Marina, Zura, Isobel and Susann

In the news this week:

1. Goodgym hit 100,000 Good Deeds on Wednesday - thank you for being part of it and making a difference to your community!
2. We welcomed Saul from Kirklees who's the new trainer for Goodgym launching up there in September :)

After doing an amazing photo with the 100,000 good deeds banner we warmed up and headed to Coram Fields - a new task! This is a fantastic charity which provides space for children to play and has activities for everyone in the community. It's a seven acre site, with a little farm, a wildlife area and football pitches - lots of space for us to do good.

We split into two teams, one led by Frances which cleared bark, debris and leaves from the Wildlife Reserve. Working hard they watched out for the bee's before heading out to help to sweep some more leaves.

Do bee's eat honey?

Meanwhile a team of 16, overseen by John from Coram Fields, weeded and cleared leaves in an area before turning over the soil with forks and removing any roots in the hardened soil. This will be used for planting some lovely flowers.

After 35 minutes of hard work we'd accumulated five huge bags of waste to be recycled - nice! We took a group photo and headed to Russell Square led by Saul, he out us through our paces - with everyone getting a good workout in.

Thanks for coming guys, lovely evening as always. I'm away for the next couple of weeks, Pritesh will be leading you when you'll be helping Cecil Sharp House and Castlehaven - sign up here

PB out