On Saturday, I joined residents of the Royal Road housing estate to help plant various plants around the estate.

I arrived just after 2 pm. I was within a small group that initially started to dig up sections of the ground so we could insert the plants into the ground.

We then planted a range of plants including Geraniums, Euphorbias and Bergonias.

I stayed to help for around 90 minutes before departing. They were thankful for my help during this time.

Pun credited to: Michael

This wasn't your usual GoodGym Lambeth group run. For starters, we had it lucky tonight with a two for Tuesday's in terms of tasks. Both Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery needed our help tonight, but more on that later. Yet, the other unusual observation was the Group Run leader tonight looked different. Firstly, Yianny had a cast on his lower right leg, but that wasn't it. Related to that fact, Sam, the Area Activator from GoodGym Southwark was here to lead! (Wait for applause and cheering). It seems like the borough border control lets anyone through on a Tuesday night.... 🙄

Yianny was there for the start of the Group Run to deliver the introductions as 12 GoodGymers (which was a great split in terms of numbers) came out in full force. After a bitterly cold week last week, it was a pleasant change to have mild winds in our favour. However, most of us didn't get the memo and wrapped up to be warmer than a Polar Bear in the Caribbean. After a quick warm up and the ice-breaker question of - Tomorrow is the 1st of December, if you were to have any type of advent calendar, what would yours consist of?

Amongst the 12 answers, we had chilli sauces, sweets (Moams), biscuits, cheeses, coffee, tea bags and save the best for last, a different song every day....songs can last more than a day,!

---

Short Run or Long Run

Since we had two tasks that were fairly close to each other and both within less than 2k away, Sam decided to ensure the run to Slade Adventure Playground would have a massive detour and end up being 2.4k each way against a straight route Aislin was going to take to The Remakery, which was 1.6k away. Everyone had to make their choice and in the end, in turned out that all of the women - Aislin, Rebecca, Shauna, Gayle and Katy (and Michael) wanted to take the shorter run to The Remarkery whilst the guys - Sam, George, Michael, Chris, Nathan and Joao took the loopy route via Clapham North station (an out and back detour) to Slade Adventure Playground at a fast pace! 🏃

---

Such a sh*tty job

Actually, the task was quite lovely! The guys arrived at Slade Adventure Playground just after 19:25 to meet Jamie and we went straight into the task. He kindly turned on the floodlights so that we could see what we were doing, yet the portable floodlights we had came in handy for the final destination. But what were we transporting to the final destination?

It comes from Lansdowne Way, which is nearby - Jamie

Jamie said that to Sam when he asked about what we were dealing with tonight and thought there's no City Farm near here....where did this truck load of 💩 come from?

There's a local horse stables on Lansdowne Way - Jamie

Great to know that it wasn't the 💩 of the residents of Lansdowne Way....yet, we had the task of moving under a tonne worth of manure from the middle of the playground nearer to the community garden and the beds. Armed with four wheelbarrows and four shovels, we all got into a rhyme and a system of filling the wheelbarrows, walking/jogging over to the destination to pour the steamy 💩.

Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, we saw the pile of 💩 get smaller and smaller. It was a full body workout - core and definitely, the upper body (shoulders and back).

We're running out of steam - Chris

Yes, Chris, as the steam came out of the warm 💩, we were feeling the strain on our bodies. Before we knew it, the time was approaching 20:00. Yet, after scooping the last bit of powdery 💩, Sam transported the last wheelbarrow to be dumped on the new pile we had created. There was no time for the top soil to be moved, however, Jamie said it would be a task for his volunteers (60+ age group) on Saturday. We wish them well!

---

Wood I?

I certainly would 😉 Don't know what I am talking about here, but most things in life, I would. Anyway, Aislin, Rebecca, Shauna, Gayle and Katy (and Michael) arrived at The Remakery to be given the task of moving woodchip. Another strength and conditioning task that required them to shovel woodchip into wheelbarrows and transport/spreading them onto the beds that were in The Remakery's garden. They did remind the group that on Thursday night, they need our assitance with setting up their Art Studio. You can find and sign up to the task here.

Thank You Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owners and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery for agreeing to stay later than usual and for hosting us. They will have GoodGym Lambeth back to help them!

Well either 3cm or 10 cm, depending on the size of the bulb.

Tonight's task and accompanying subject matter was all about bulbs and keeping light!

We met at Papa's, welcomed Hannah to her first GoodGym run 🥳 and discussed different types of light 💡 with some very clever/somewhat questionable answers... Former GG Lambeth runner/legend (and now GG York Area Activator!) Nicky wanted to start a conversation about how important it is to make ourselves visible when running at night. Our red tees are pretty good, but some reflective strips/those fancy silver jackets are definitely a good shout.

#RunBrightatNight

And suggestions of using headtorches, regular torches and light bulbs fit in very well with the evening's task...

---

We split into a couple of groups, going 2 or 4k to Fairholme House which provides sheltered accommodation. When we arrived, Anke and Conrad showed us a very well prepared area of grass, with a perfect number of trowels (and one spinny bulb apple corer type gizmo) and a selection of different bulbs - snowdrops, daffodils and fritallia meleagris which really are chequered! 🤯

How Deep Is Your Bulb?

Anke explained how bulbs need to be planted at twice the depth of the bulb's size (e.g. 1.5cm bulb needs to be covered in 3cm soil) - useful to know!

We whizzed through the task, and were done in 20 minutes! We took a quick snap and then headed back via Wyck Gardens for some Rock, Paper, Scissors action (feat. sprints, wall sits and squats).

---

This evening's bakes were kindly provided by Aislin - some mouthwateringly delicious sticky toffee muffins. 🤤😋🧁

CLICK HERE to sign up for next week's Group Run to deliver some leaflets for Get Rid Of & Donate.

What a delightful evening for doing good.

We met in golden hour, discussed which plant we'd be (with some very thoughtful reasoning) and welcomed brand new GG runners Jesse and Tim, as well as brand-new-to-Lambeth-group-run-runners Lindy, Rachel, Katie and Federico 👏👏👏 Lovely to have you along!

Our task was a brisk 2k from Papa's and despite a couple of traffic light squat stops, we made it to Fairholme House with energy aplenty.

Orsetta from the incredible Urban Growth gave us a bunch of tasks, mostly involving brown stuff:

🍂 Compost turning - which Becca, Lindy and Chris managed with aplomb(??)

🍂 Most of us were based at a huge pile of mulch (basically woodchip) which was to be moved onto the ground around some raised beds. Some shovelled and some wheel barrowed. And we also bagged a load of it which was going to another nearby community garden!

🍂 Then we had our team of rakers, Federico, Clare and Michael who spread the mulch across some weed-proof tasks, just like one might spread Nutella on toast 👅

The task was done in no time, and now the residents of Fairholme House have a bouncy surface to their garden to enjoy whilst tending to the veg, and some thoroughly turned compost.

---

On our way back, we took a little detour for a classic game of rock, paper, scissors with a fitness twist.

Great work guys :)

Next week I'm not about so Sarah is leading a sesh to Jubilee Primary School. Here's the link.

Rebecca, Sam and I headed to a community garden in Camberwell to help Urban Growth move some mulch.

There was an ENORMOUS pile which needed moving from the car park onto some black tarpaulin near the newly built raised beds and plenty of shovels and wheelbarrows to do the job.

After a bit longer than an hour, with some help from a couple of residents we had covered the entire area, and had a great entire body workout. Including finding and lifting some huge logs in amongst the mulch 💪

There's still a pile left to move so we'll hopefully go back soon to finish the job.

A WHOPPING 39 RUNNERS braced the 3-degree chillz 🥶 to help not one but TWO organisations on Tuesday night.

One group turned into a postie 📫 squad for the evening and delivered almost 1,000 flyers ✈️ for a local primary school around the Brixton area, whilst the other group headed up to Stockwell to shift a lot of earth 🌍 for a community garden.

We warmly (once we were inside) welcome some fantastic new runners this evening, so head over and give a cheer to Anna, Jon, Ranulph, Sarah, Shauna and Becca! 👋🏽👋🏻👋🏼👋🏿

INTERMISSION: Please find below the mathematical equation that validates this report's pun:

DOUBLE TROUBLE: we split into TWO groups, doing TWO tasks and thus helping TWO organisations

TOIL: the Spurgeon Estate group was subjected to some gruelling lifting on-task and some pumping bodyweight drills afterwards. The Richard Atkins group had to shift over 900 flyers in 30 minutes.

AND: a truth-functional operator of logical conjunction

RUBBLE: we had to move a shit tonne of rubble

Please send pun of the month award and / or prize money to: Goodgym Lambeth, Papa's Park, Brixton

Ok, onto the actual run reports. First, Tom Benson and the Richard Atkins Primary flyering squad:

So me and a merry band of 16 Goodgymers hopped on the good foot and jogged up Brixton hill to Richard Atkins Primary School. Where we met Owen who gave us our mission, which was he had 1,000 leaflets promoting their early years centre which had spaces available in January and they wanted us to spread the word around the area.

As every single person in Tom's group said,

I believe I can fly(er)

So getting into teams of 2, folks splits up and got leafleting. Within 20 minutes we had covered the surrounding area all that was left was the long road home. So split into two teams we efficiently worked like a goodgym caterpilla and made our way down the 1 km road making sure we posted to every door. All in all we delivered around 900 leaflets. All that was left was to jog back and stretch it off. Nice one team, you were all great posties.

And then, the Spurgeon Estate team:

23 of us headed 1.8k up to Stockwell to meet Fred, an organiser of the Spurgeon Estate community gardens. The gardens have recently expanded, turning an area called 'The Secret Garden' from a locked-up wasteland into a productive and beautiful garden with raised beds (which we helped build back in July) and lots of edible nature that goes straight onto the plates of those on the Estate. Fred needed a huge team to shift some displaced earth and rubble, which had been bagged up in the garden and was soon to be taken away - but guess what IT NEEDED TO BE OUT ON THE STREET FOR COLLECTION. Not a problem for these guys.

As Fred said when she saw us arrive,

I knew you moved rubble when you came in

There's only so much you can say about moving sacks of dirt but the highlight was one of the most highly-functioning (and sassy) GOODGYM LAMBETH HUMAN CHAINS ever seen. A lot of people had a go at thinking of chain puns because we were so proud of the chain. Here are but a few:

1. A chain of scenery will do your good
2. No chain, no gain
3. A chain is as good as a rest

And then we ran back to Papa's for the classic 3-team competitive bodyweight drills. Everybody won. The end.