Last night was possibly one of my favourite ever GoodGym tasks.

Lead by the wonderful Katie we had a lovely two miles run up to Vauxhall Food Bank en masse. It’s a good distance 2 miles. You burn roughly the same amount of calories as a bag of Maltesers.. so that’s good… and that’s two bags when you add the return journey too.

When we got there if felt like a massive task. MASSIVE. I didn’t know if we were going to complete it. A sea of food and tins needed sorting and weighing. 1500kg to be exact. But see this is why GoodGym Lambeth is magnificent, because that massive task took 35 minutes. A mere 35 minutes… it was really quite incredible to watch.

Now imagine if you hadn’t come last night. None of you. It’s Christmas, there’s lots going on, party season has started and we’re all short of time. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s windy. It would be totally understandable if you decjded to swerve last night. All of you. But you didn’t. you came. And so that meant that all of that sorting and weighing was done in 35 minutes, instead of the two days is would have taken the food bank volunteers. So people get the food they need over Christmas sooner, and there’s more of it. And you made that happen because you decided to come to GoodGym rather than stay at home in the warm.

Santa knows by the way. He's watching.

Two Tasks, 27 runners. It went like this....

Stockwell Park Estate

Half the group opted for a shorter run, but blimey that did not mean less of a work out. There was digging holes, pulling (gently) out daffodil bulbs, saving the poor worms we disturbed, removing stones, mulching, then re planting the daffs.

Sounds simple but the digging a hauling of bags meant for an excellent upper body work out.\

A lovely email from Naomi this morning.

"Thank you and everyone in the Good Gym team for all the fantastic work you did last night. Everyone was so enthusiastic, friendly and full of energy and it was wonderful to get all the holes dug and the whole bed mulched in such a short space of time".

The Portico Gallery by Tom

"Steel is Real! Last night a band of 12 Goodgymers made their way to West Norwood to be welcomed by everyone’s favourite West Norwooden, John from the Portico Gallery. As always he was on top form and gave us a run down of the task in hand and all the exciting things happening at the gallery over the next week, including a performance from a flying clown (ErictheFred), a lindy Hop tea dance with the guy who choreographed part of the Olympic opening ceremony (the NHS part with the nurses on beds) and the regular community monthly feast. West Norwood continues to confirm its status as a hidden gem in London’s crown.

This week’s tasks as per usual was moving things around the yard, highlights included folding and moving tarpaulin into a neat pile and packing it away nicely, move lots of steel poles into their correct place of rest, moving steel trolleys out of the way and moving a stack of crates onto, and I quote John, “Dry Land”. We also swept it up so it looked as good as new. GoodGym Lambeth have been coming here over the last three weeks and when we first arrived the yard was chocker full of stuff. However over this time we have finally completed the main goal of clearing the whole yard. This as per usual, fits the GoodGym mantra regarding tasks, whereby it now looks in a lot better shape than how we found it. The phrase many hands springs to mind as if this was left to John and a few others it would have taken significantly longer than our three sessions, so all in all cracking stuff. At the end John bade us farewell and wished us all in the GoodGym community a very merry Christmas, top man and top task.

F.Y.I if anyone is interested in what is happening at the portico, here is a link to its website. It’s a fantastic space that has a real community feel, it’s like stepping into a village hall in Wales, definitely a worthwhile browse. http://www.porticogallery.org.uk/"