It was a big night for one runner who reached his 100th good deed. Nice one PHIL WOODALL. An incredible achievement and looking absolutely fly in those angel wings 👌

Tonight’s task was at St Michael’s Fellowship. They host vulnerable families for a few weeks and get counselling etc. It’s really fab.

But first we had to get there.

We split into three groups, taking short, medium and long routes and were all blessed with a deceivingly long hill up to our destination - ideal for improving fitness levels.

We visited to help with a few jobs that would help brighten up the place. Expecting to have just a couple of tasks, we were given a lovely loooong list of things to do. Perfect for this evening’s rather large group.

🎨3 walls to be painted: sunshine yellow, pearly white & DEEP PURPLE.

🎁 Wrapping presents for the residents. It turns out we have some very neat wrappers in Lambeth and it was decided that the BALL PIT was easily the best present.

🛋 Steam cleaning the chairs. It made them quite wet but the steam team decided that was probably the idea

🧼 Cleaning the windows

🧴Cleaning the skirting boards

🧽 Dusting the surfaces and cobwebs.

I think that was it.

Everyone was very swift at getting their tasks done, apart from the purple painters who took their sweet time but did a very thorough job.

We all ran back and had a quick stretch.

Don’t forget next Tuesday is our Brixmas party where there will be a banging quiz from Steve and George as well as 2019’s S*** PRIZE OF THE YEAR.

We also have a group run before with options of gardening jobs at Jubilee Primary or playing board games with the residents of Charleston House. Sign up here.

A trio of tasks awaited our runners this evening, as did an opening of the heavens!

We started the evening with a quick chat about the pressing issues of the day, namely the GoodGym social this Thursday and the Spartan race weekend which Chi is organising.

We were joined by a GG tourist, Matt, who was down from Liverpool, and 3 new runners; Lauren, Billy and Abigail - give them a cheer!!

We had a quick warm up on the courts, with the skies giving us a dose of some seriously chunky hail and then we split into our 3 groups:

Beth took a group to Loughborough Farm and had this to say:

A group of nine of us took a relaxed run over to Loughborough farm to do our usual task of moving soil from A to B. There’s quite a bit of construction work going on at the farm. The addition of a community workshop will be a great way for the farm to achieve even more but it does mean that the space is changing shape and various bags of soil occasionally have to be moved out of the way. With two and a half bags that needed shifting we got shovelling and wheelbarrowing and filled up a couple of empty bags on pallets ready to be moved by a forklift. After 40 minutes we’d moved two bags worth and all felt like we’d had a good workout so set off back to base, some of us with pockets full of fresh oregano.

Here’s a few words from Tom who took a group over to a garage at King’s College Hospital to help with the GP Food Co op’s storage space:

A merry band of 10 goodgymers took on the mission to sort out Ed’s garage. After running down pretty much the full length of Coldharbour Lane we met Ed where he showed us the job. He was doing a spring clean and needed some things moving out of the garage. Highlights included a rowing machine and Ruth did a sterling job sweeping out the garage with half a brush. A band of three members decided that the garage could only hold 6 folks and got to sprucing up the front garden by collecting the rubbish in the front.

At the end of the session, fitness guru Chi took us through our paces by doing some core exercises in Ruskin Park. We planked, we squatted, we planked and we did all manner of abs related things, top man, nice one. After 10 mins we were ready to head back, so peg it back along Coldharbour Lane back to a nice warm down.

Nice one team and cheers again Chi for the abs workout.

And my group headed to one of the St Michael’s Fellowship Family Residential centres to give them a hand with clearing up their gardens.

We took the scenic route with a little run up the hill in Brockwell Park with Nicky and Emily back marking. When we arrived, we were given a list of jobs and we got stuck in pretty pronto. We took on a serious amount of weeding, removing some old trellis, getting rid of some old toys which had been thrown over the fence from the nursery next door and cleaning the patio!

We could tell it was a pleasant and vital space for the service users and great to be able to make a difference. Nicky is even running the Marathon for the St Michael’s Fellowship!

Next week is a double task, helping out Crisis at Elephant & Castle or going to Brixton Windmill. Get signed up here.

Yes Lambeth! 👍

This evening we welcomed lots of lovely new people and celebrated Tess's 50th run. What a good start!

We had two cracking tasks this evening - the shorter run was led by Beth. Here's what she had to say about it:

Following some confusion about where the woodchip had been delivered, we headed to Loughborough Junction farm to meet Karen and to help spread woodchip around the paths at the farm. We utilised anything we could find to move the woodchip, a couple of wheelbarrows, buckets and even a plastic bag. After about half an hour of shoveling, wheeling and spreading the pile was gone and any last bits swept up. With time to spare John lead us in a quick fitness session which required us to do impressions of rockstars, frogs and skiers.

The rest of us headed 4km up to Streatham to help the fantastic family support charity, St. Michael's Fellowship. They had loads more clothing donations for babies and toddlers that needed sorting into packs before being distributed to local families who need them. Everyone set about their spring, summer, autumn and winter collections with aplomb and loved being in such a positive space.

Do these shorts go with this top? Asked Andy. NO! Said everyone.

On return to base we enjoyed some stretches and bake off delights from Katie (that's me!) and the elusive Jay who got up at 5am to bake his. Now that's commitment!

Hello Lambeth!

THIRTY THREE of you amazing people joined me in Lambeth last night as we helped two organisations, ran a combined 236km, gave out a shit prize and unfortunately failed again to produce cake!

In the news this week:

• A big Lambeth welcome to Hannah who joined us for her first GoodGym run.
• Hearty congratulations to artist extraordinaire Tim for winning shit prize of the month for his dedication in both running and drawing and for generally being an all round awesome bloke.
• Don’t forget the GoodGym-wide social is next Thursday in Angel and if you’re a Libra then this is the social for you!
• Fancy volunteering at a race – check out the Shoreditch 10k on the 14th October – perks included!

And finally a big thank you to the TaskForce and to everyone for helping me out and being such a great crowd to lead and run with! On to the night:

We had two tasks – revisiting the work at Clapham Common for Colour your Common and heading up to St Michael’s Fellowship to sort through some charitable donations.

Thank you to Tom, Nicky and Vix who were in charge of the St Michael's Fellowship group. Words from Tom:

We ran 4km up Streatham Hill to help St. Michael’s Fellowship. An amazing charity who work to break cycles of disadvantage so that children may lead more healthy and confident lives.

We were met by the lovely Hillary and team. Who informed us that our task was to sort donations of all shapes and sizes of baby clothes into seasonably appropriate packages for Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter wear.

This required a great deal of curation and attention to detail from the team. With lots of spirited debate over colour clashes, gendered onesies and whether it’s ever appropriate to wear socks with sandals.

With so many donations to sort through, the scale of the task was too much for one night’s work. But we hope to return soon in some form to help with the great work St. Michael’s are doing.

The rest of us headed up to Clapham Common, a shorter run but a much more physical task. Thanks to Frances, George, Jim and John for guidance and back-marking. Here’s our report:

Wanting to avoid the traffic of Clapham High Street we headed on a slightly different route but ably led by Frances, George and Jim we made our way to the common with no problems. There we were greeted with much darkness and also Adrian and David who were getting out various tools for the task. We split in to two groups, ‘Turfers’ and ‘Turners’. The Turfers worked on a specific area cutting the turf from the soil. A precise and tough job given the ground was still very firm. The Turners worked on an area that had previously been removed of turf and slowly but surely turned and broke up the soil working carefully to ensure that the ground they turned wasn’t trodden on or compacted. With various lights and headtorches being used it made for quite the eerie scene. After 25 minutes hard work it was time to go, I think packing up may have been the hardest part of the night particularly the travails of the wheelbarrow with a flat tyre! In any case all was put away and all that was left was for us to run back to Papa’s!

Thank you to Frances who led the stretch at the end of the evening and thanks again to everyone for a wonderful night in Lambeth - I’ll be sure to come back if I get the chance! Katie is back next week so do sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh