16 runners ran 4km to leaflet, litter pick and tidy up Southwark

Southwark News

• Interested in what happened at the Shindig back in July? There's now a write up of how we're moving forward and details of how you can get involved. Have a look here.

• Next week we're painting benches at Tigers RFC. It's a 6km run overall - sign up here.

• Hello to Sian who joined us for the first time tonight!

• We're already talking about the GoodGym abroad trip next year - it's in Sofia, the website isn't up yet but you can find out more and sign up on the GoodGym website here.

Good bin? That's rubbish!

Sadly Stuart Road Allotment's wasps are still in residence - the weather hasn't changed as much as they'd hoped so they're still there! So what did we do instead? Scavenger hunt time!

The basics - a point system for:

*picking up rubbish

*doing a boomerang

*good dogs

*shops/pubs with a 'A'

BONUS POINTS

• Most creative team photo

• Best pun

*Leaflets GONE

We had 45 minutes in our teams to rack up as many points as possible and meet back on the Rye for - guess what? Squats! Everyone loves the Sally Squat Challenge (google it for more info). We were leafletting to advertise missions to local people and to raise awareness for a Community Consultation Coffee Morning that Age UK Southwark are holding on Tuesday 9th October at 10.00am. The consultation is designed to hear the community's voices on how the Yalding Healthy Living & Learning Centre should move forward. It's a great opportunity to get involved with what's happening for older people in the local community. Spread the word!

Scores on the doors: Baggers in wooden spoon position with 31 points, The Raccoons in third place with 37, Swingbin were the runners up with a whopping 77 points and in peak position with 89 points were the Fishy Four!

In total we bagged up 7 full bags of rubbish from all over the Peckham/Nunhead end of the borough. A serious bit of cleaning up. Nice one! We also shifted all of our leaflets - bonus points for everyone!

We had fun, we did some good and we ended up at Batch after, enjoying a few Hump Day beverages and much needed food.

A great night everyone, look forward to seeing you next week.

Lucy J

A launch with a bang....29 runners smashed it tonight on the first ever GoodGym Group Run in Slough Town

After the welcome speeches and cheers (thank you Councillor Pantelic for opening our 1st Group Run), we headed out of our base location to do a warm up and ice breaker...28 people had to get to 'knowing me knowing you ahah'

I know you

After a warm up game of getting to know you (we exchanged names and our favourite places to go on holiday)...we headed out on a steady 2km run to the stream at Templewood to give this little hidden gem a strim, trim, pick and prune to allow the vegetation to flourish again. We were met by our first task owner Claire from www.wwt.org.uk (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust), who are doing an amazing job in transforming the Salt Hill Stream and surrounding areas. She gave us a brief on what we could do to help this community area and divided us into 3 teams:

• The Waders
• The Pickers
• The Wheelbarrowers

Each team were tasked to complete their given duties within a challenging 30 minutes. Special shout out to Ricky and his wheelbarrowing buddies for showing true grit and determination of the Slough citizens by wanting to finish laying the wood chips along the path (even when everyone else was lining up for the group photo)

Freedom

We bashed those brambles (Sut Yee in particular looked very fetching in her waders), freed the vegetation, cleared the site of 10 bags of rubbish/debris (and a loo seat!) and covered the path with wood chips...phew! A lot was achieved tonight.

We faired Claire a cheerio and see you later and headed back to base in two groups

Steady vs Speedy

Our return run was a battle of speeds.. we divided into 2 groups...Mo's Speedies and Manjit's Steadies..Just for being speedy, Mo's team had a 2 minute penalty wait as Manjit's steadies headed back to base... suffice to say its steady all the way in Slough.. Great effort by everyone!

Great to see so many people join us this evening.... some of us were established runners, others were first timers...whatever your reason to run, it was fab having you there tonight on our launch event...you all ROCK!

Keep in touch?

We have many means of keeping in touch, so please take a look and join in on our journey to help the communities of Slough

• GoodGym Slough website
• Goodgym Slough Instagram
• Goodgym Slough facebook
• Goodgym Slough twitter

We will be running and doing good every Monday from now on, so please come back and spread the word...together we can achieve so much...Next week we are running a 2km route (one way) to help The Parvaaz Project on Northampton Avenue to have a garden make over

LAUNCH NIGHT!!!

And so it begins, Tuesday nights, 6.45pm, at The Guildhall in Kingston. That's right, tonight saw the launch of GG Kingston and 32 runners came to join us as we celebrated the pairing of GoodGym and Kingston Council in order to get fit by doing good in the community.

We had the pleasure of being joined by Mayor, Julie Pickering , who gave a warm and heart felt speech that made some runners feel as though they were part of some great developmental changes in the borough. It was wonderful to have the Mayor wish us well and offer such encouraging words of support for GoodGym. In addition to this we were also joined by Martel Atterbury and Sue Gregory-Johnson from the Sports and Leisure Development Team a Kingston Council. Martel played a key role in getting Kingston off the ground and Sue was fantastic tonight, sending out a live stream on Twitter of the run - check it out...

https://t.co/aaBAKtPVpW

— Active Kingston (@ActiveKingston) May 15, 2018

After the briefing and warm up we set out on our first run, heading to Tolworth Allotments to prep an allotment and move a shed for Community Brain and the SHEDx project. This organisation have recently taken over the abandoned Tolworth Allotments with the aim of teaching food growing and generating sustainable sources of locally produced food. They want to inspire communities to feel proud of where they live and actively engage with it.

To get to the allotments we ran 3km through the Kingston streets and up a cheeky hill, you could hear a slight squeal from the Richmond GG runners who joined us to show their support. Their squeal was because they said "they just knew" Mark would put a hill in somewhere!

Once we reached the allotments we were greeted by** Robin Hutchinson ** who explained all about Community Brain and the SHEDx project. Do give them a follow on Twitter!! Robin instructed us runners to lift and turn over soil in the allotment so that it was ready to be used for the next stage of the project.

A time lapse of our @GoodGymKingston runners working their magic at the @communitybrain allotment #transformation pic.twitter.com/69Fs7OVRfU

— Active Kingston (@ActiveKingston) May 15, 2018

And for the finale of this fantastic task that already saw Kingston runners itching to complete fully we were asked to all move a shed! That's right a shed! So although we had all pretty much just met that evening, we clubbed together with true community spirit and deadlifted (like Mark showed us) a very large shed, moving it to it's new desired location at the other end of the allotment.

Get a SHED load of this! Episode 1 - The Lift pic.twitter.com/0mG9a932Mt

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) May 15, 2018

Such an AWESOME task!

So after many high fives we all headed back to Guildhall, thankfully mostly down hill as we had done the hard work already and were pretty tired from lifting sheds (I feel like Wonder Woman saying that!!)

Once back at Guildhall, our stretching was accompanied by a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment, we had started our good deeds in Kingston and it felt great! So lovely to meet fellow runners, wanting to help in their local community, I am looking forward to running with you again. Thank you to all the GoodGym runners from Richmond who came to join us and Bryony and Gillian from head office, it was great to have you supporting as back markers.

Now over to Mark for a final comment, "So at last we have GG Kingston in place, looking forward to growing it with you all and providing for the Kingston community where it is needed most. It is your group and you are encouraged to take part as much as you like, so anything from suggesting potential tasks to writing this run report, or anything else that would make a strong Kingston Taskforce; feel free to let me know. Additionally I meant to say a HUGE thank you to Martel who's energy and enthusiasm has helped kick GG Kingston off tonight, particularly with arranging such an awesome start location. Finally, Robin was delighted with all that we achieved and he asked that if any of you wish to know more feel free to contact him under the Community Brain handle on Twitter."

What a GREAT sight! As the Kingston team hit the streets tonight! #kingston #goodgym #runninggroup #volunteering #gettingfitbydoinggood #keepfit #activekingston pic.twitter.com/tNWv4U5Lw7

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) May 15, 2018

What a lift-off for GoodGym Newcastle!

After a big intro at our new base at Hotel Indigo from trainer Anji and not forgetting, of course, a massive group photo, 42 runners set off to do the first ever GoodGym good deed in Newcastle!

Back-marked by Ed, the group set off on what some described as a mountain up the famous summit known to others as Westgate Road, past the famous motorbike shops (did anyone teach our Southern visitors how to say mo-ta-bike in Geordie?) reaching the task venue for the night in just under 2K of completely uphill running- what a way to warm up!

We were met by the lovely Jill at Changing Lives who has really helped us to get GoodGym Newcastle off the ground. While some wanted to stay and enjoy the juice and biscuits being dished out, others were keen to get to work. There were four tasks in all: a huge garden clean up complete with jazzy gloves and tools and a kitchen clean then round in the main house, two groups got to grips with a communal area clean and a kitchen freshen up, complete with the dreaded OVEN CLEANING.

I wonder if they will pop over to my house later to have a go at my oven?

More juice, fruit and a few more photos and 40 minutes later we were off again, this time 2K downhill -yay

We stopped off to do a mini drill session led by Queen of the Drills Anji who really enjoyed seeing everyone looking super cool doing tip toe walks and trying not to trip over one another doing that cross-over-feet thing that footballers do.

We are back with Changing Lives next week (venue TBC) so join us for more uphill training, juice and jazzy gloves. We will be staying at Hotel Indigo for a bank holiday drink afterwards. Join us!