28 people caused no constitutional outrage in Camden, ran over 5km and helped Cecil Sharp House!

As Westminster was hell bent on tearing the country down we had the certainty that bringing a group together, doing some running and offering up our services to help others would bring calm and happiness and so it did!

Tonight we continued Goodgym's partnership with Team GB and learnt that people are not fans of badges! However we're pleased to support the initiative to get people more active and we have some great photos to prove it!

Once the photoshoot was done (thanks Freya and Rosie) we gathered for a rather disjointed intro welcoming Laurent and Ramona for their first ever GoodGym session and taking in the news of the social next week, community missions at Story Garden and all the health and safety and then with a quick warm up done... we were off!

With varying abilities in the group we soon decided to split into two and Rosie led the keener group ahead. At Cecil Sharp we heard from Susannah about the building and why our help is so important. This week we were working on making the grounds and garden look their prettiest. We split into two groups with 10 at the front sweeping and weeding and the remainder at the back doing the same with some additional tasks to keep everyone busy!

With it being a big job and with lots to do we worked hard for 40mins and got everything done. Susannah was very grateful and reckoned we'd done over two days worth of work! A job very well done.

After some group photos in the fading light we were off, again with two groups. We made good progress back to the Crick, stretched and then headed to the pub or home!

Thanks everyone, Frances is in charge next week as we head to Alara, you can sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh

21 incredible people joined me in Camden to run 8km and help at Antrim Allotments!

As GG HQ work hard to find you the right replacement for Paul, little old me will be looking after you and trying to bring some balance to the force over the next few weeks.

The king is dead, long live the... interim king

It was a week of new things with me in charge, meeting Helen the new chair at Antrim and the following runners joining GG for the first time: a big GGC welcome to Anna and Paul!

After confusing everyone by turning right out of the Crick we did the usual briefing, warmed up and went through the news:

• Congrats to all that took part in the penultimate GG Big Six race of the year at Bath Two Tunnels. Don't forget the final race is in September in Edinburgh. Details here!

• GG is turning TEN! Come to the party at City Hall and tell us what GG means to you here!

• Finally get the 5th September in the diary, it's the date of the next GG social. Also get the 8th November saved as I hear its going to be a special social!

On to the night at hand, with one task tonight we ran in a big group with Louise middle-marking and Abi and Rosie back marking (thanks!). Its a decent route to Antrim but hills are unavoidable! We worked hard and everyone put loads of effort in. Once we arrived at Antrim we met Helen the new chair of the allotments and she showed everyone the tasks! The allotments were looking particularly lush but there were still patches that needed work. The order of play today was mainly weeding and clearing with a healthy dose of digging too!

We had a strong 20 mins of hard work sadly the insects were hard at work too and sadly not many escaped with out bites. Must remember that citronella spray next time! Before we knew it the time had passed and so we returned our tools, said goodbye and posed for a group photo!

We took a different route home and split into a Rosie group and an Other group. The other group took a more leisurely pace but also conquered Primrose Hill (sorry Abi) whilst the Rosie group hurried home at pace.

After a stretch outside the Crick we siad our goodbyes and headed home, as ever a trusty, or should that be thirsty group headed for 'impromptu' drinks at the Somers Town Coffeehouse.

Thanks and see you all next week - task is being confirmed but you can sign up here!

Pritesh

24 Goodgymers ran 4km to help the Story Garden lift tons!

Thanks for coming along, no newbies but lots of regulars and recent joiners :)

In the news this week:

1. Go along to the Community Mission today helping Camden Helpline - see details here.
2. Sign up for the GG Olympics here, you haven't got long to enter your events to represent #TeamCamden
3. Also people are going to do the Scottish Half Marathon in September, see full details here.

Well what a night, we were back at the new task - Story Garden - a community garden that is currently under construction. It's changed so much in a week and will keep on changing over the the next year, it opens as part of the Somers Town Community Festival in July and then Skip Garden will move over to the site in October.

Martina gave us two tasks last night:

• Moving those huge Oak sleepers (big planks of woods) - these will be used to make 10 planters which community projects will adopt to look after.
• Shifting through soil and stones to find large stones (not concrete) which will be used to make paths - kinda looked like we were preparing to make a Roman Road.

As described by Thomas shifting the oak sleepers was some of the hardest work we've done at GoodGym Camden - lots of heavy lifting! Involving 2 or 3 people lifting each one (unless your Hanry). Over 30 mlinutes we moved at least 60 of them. Caz described all this rubble and wood lifting as quite a biblical task, a short time after that the heavens opened and rain descended upon us.... Luckily we were running by this point and it didn't get too heavy.

We did a nice 3.5k loop + the 800m time trial at Granary Square - lovely! After a slight early finish we stretched and headed to the pub.

Next week we are helping Antrim Allotments (6k overall) - sign up here.

PB out