Last night 13 runners ran 6km to weed at Bell House

Southwark News

• The next GoodGym RaceTeam race is East Farm Frolic run by the wonderful White Star Running. Distances are varied - 10km, half marathon, marathon and a 12 hour race you can take on with a team or solo. I'm running the 10km, we've got 37 signups already. Come and meet GoodGymers from around the country for some muddy, traily fun in Dorset. Sign up here.

• Soon GoodGym will be rolling out community missions - this means turning up to tasks that we can't usually reach on a weekend. We don't meet at Old Spike, but run there individually (or in groups). You don't have to have a DBS check for these. They're going to be an awesome way to reach places we can't get to on a Wednesday night. Let me know if you have ideas of particular places to go!

• A huge shout out to Stuart, Helen and Anna who joined us for the first time last night!

That's enough of the business

Last night we gathered at a rather stuffy Old Spike sniffling and eye-rubbing due to the insane hayfever. I'm convinced its mixed with some delightful pollution round these parts... After a headcount and a warm up we split into two groups:

• Team 'leg stretch' headed off at a stiff pace and included a lap of Dulwich Park taking them to 4.8km for their run out.
• Team 'we're going to get there on time' led by Girija ran directly there and got to work before the others arrived.

We came we saw we weeded

Sarah from Bell House set us to work weeding infront of the house. We spent a good 25 minutes tugging, digging and hauling out weeds (and some old chains!) and then popped inside to have a look at the exhibition being held. The choice to do that had nothing to do with the free wine...! Sarah and Chloe were absolutely thrilled with how much we got done and took a lovely team photo of us outside the house. It makes for a pretty hilarious photo!

We took the way home easy although everyone was absolutely flying down Barry Road (yes it is called that!) which is much more fun to run down than run up. As we reached the last set of lights we set up a game of chase the hare. Stuart volunteered to be the hare and I set him off at a speedy pace and three seconds later the whole group had the challenge of chasing him down to Old Spike. No one caught him this time... but there will be more rounds, just you wait!

Great job everyone, Sarah and Chloe were thrilled and I'm particularly looking forward to doing some stuff with them over winter.

See you next week! Lucy

15 runners ran 10km to scoop poop and fill the skip at Surrey Docks Farm

** Southwark News**

The GoodGym Olympics is coming! We're looking to get a team together for the GoodGym Relay which involves being velcroed together (it will be absolute wonderful mayhem). PUT THE DATE IN YOUR DIARY - SATURDAY 30TH JUNE AT PARLIAMENT HILL TRACK. You need to make your race choices via this form by 3rd June.

We'd love to spread the GoodGym Southwark word in a local paper/radio station/anything! If you have any ideas in the Southwark area let me know - lucyj@goodgym.org

That's enough of the business...

Huge welcome and hello to the four runners that joined us for the first time last night! Sami, Dan, Sarah and Nichola Give them a cheer :)

Last night was a long one - after a briefing we set off the for 5km (OK, 5.6km...) to Surrey Docks Farm where we were welcomed by Gemma. She was delighted to see so many of us. We split into two groups but not before we wished Hermione the donkey a Happy 12th Birthday:

• One group clearing the goat yard of dropping.
• One group helping fill up skip with scrap metal and tree stumps and all sorts!

We got everything done in 20 mins (hooray!) and had a bit of time to meet their Oxford Sandy and Black pigs. Gemma told us they'd be expecting piglets in the coming months (better go back then eh!) and explained some uncomfortable truths about life as a working farm. The long and short of it is that if they name an animal, it's staying, if they don't name it, it will be used for meat. The meat is then sold at the farm shop. This is literally the most responsible and sustainable way to eat meat. To the farm shop everyone! And whilst you're there you can pick up all the other ingredients for a roast!

Surrey Docks Farm is aways magical to visit. On the way back it was a race between 5 runners on the overground and 10 runners running the 5.6km back. Guess what? The runners won! We'll ignore the fact that they probably had to wait for a train!

A really fantastic run both ways last night, I was impressed at how quickly we covered the distance.

Next week we're flyering all over Southwark for Southwark Refugee Response and Age UK. We need as many hands as possible to shift everything! Sign up here.

Great work team, see you next week!

Twelve awesome GoodGym-ers came down to help the Camden Society!

Lucy was away this week so I stepped in to lead the Southwark group. We had FIVE new runners tonight which was absolutely fantastic - welcome to Alex, George, Lucinda, Mark and Sam!

After a quick intro at Old Spike talking about the three ways in which we do good and get fit with GoodGym (group runs, missions and coach runs) we headed off for our journey to Bermondsey!

It was meant to be 4km but my watched clocked 4.5km! We all stayed together but kept up a decent pace and apart from some traffic light fun trying to get across the road in Peckham it was nice and uneventful.

Arriving at the Riverside centre in Bermondsey we let ourselves into the carpark and found the tools that had been left for us under one of the vans (see pic)!

We then tried to work out where we were supposed to be working... As the report title suggest we're still not sure we got it right but we worked on the area we could best access and hope that it is the right one! It was a fantastic effort from everybody, we cleared way more than I thought we would and despite not having all the right tools you all made it work and we cleared a huge area and filled up all the bin bags we had with detritus and weeds and rubbish!

After everything was done and a group photo taken we headed off with George and James leaving us to head home. The route home went slightly 'igglepiggle' but we rescued it and got back to Old Spike fine. A quick stretch down, a huge round of applause for Deepak on his last GoodGym run before moving to Mumbai (GoodGym India anyone?) and then we all headed off home (or to the pub!).

Thanks for having me, it is always so much fun covering Southwark and sign up here for next week's run!

Cheers, Pritesh