12 GoodGym-ers ran 5k to help C4WS Camden make beds for the homeless or 16 ran 10k to help in the Abbey Community Centre garden!

With regular trainer Paul still in Kenya getting even faster at running, it was Frances’ turn to take the helm at GoodGym Camden this week. We had 28 runners, including Enrica, Heather and Amy who all came along for the first time!

Frances led a group to the American Church in London, helping with our regular task of making the beds for the homeless shelter they provide. We got it done in record time – less than 10 minutes! As it would take around an hour for the staff to do it themselves, they really appreciated the help as always.

Record times!

With the task done, we headed to Granary Square for a fitness session. This week we split into two halves for a group fartlek session, each heading around the square in a different direction. Fartlek is Swedish for speed play, and basically means playing around with different paces – like an interval session but more fun. The twist was that each person in the group got a chance to pick the pace and how long the group did that pace for. Would you give your fellow runners a sprint, or a nice relaxing recovery pace? Both groups did a great job, covering three laps of Granary Square and mixing up the speeds nicely.

Then we headed back to base for a nice stretch and awaited Pritesh’s group, who had been on a 10k run to Abbey Community Centre for some gardening.

Abbey Community Centre

Pritesh and his merry band of 15 GoodGymers went 'long' this week and headed over to Abbey Community Centre in the heart of Kilburn. It was a lovely night for a run and despite the hard slog the view that greeted the runners at the top of Primrose Hill was certainly worth it. The challenge with the trip to Abbey is maximising time, the time it takes to run meant only twenty minutes were available to do the task. Laura from the community centre explained to everyone what Abbey does and then showed us the work that needed to be done in the garden. We split in to two groups, one group taking on the pesky weeds between the paving stones and the other turning over a flower bed so that the community centre members could get some planting done in the next week. Everyone worked super hard and Laura was extremely grateful and impressed with how much we got done. With that we said our goodbyes and then headed back to base before a good stretch after that long run. Great running and tasking everyone and thank you to Rosie who led the run back!

Lovely to see you all, hope to see you back again soon, you can sign up for next week here, Pritesh will be leading in the last week before PB is back!

Don’t forget the next time trial in Regent’s Park on 26th March – in a bit of a twist, it’ll be a handicap race this time!

After a night of gardening and a 4K run didn't even know it was winter!!

St Catherines Church is a hidden away gem, a beautiful church that were grateful for some help maintaining their grounds. Well done to Andy and Ivo with keeping a good pace during the aftermath run, sight seeing the streets of Chiswick on our route back to base. We even got to see a work of art - please see photos!!

Chiswick Buzz joined us at St Michaels to get an insight into GoodGym and how we like to help the community. I will be sure to get the Link out to you guys when the article is released.

As we ran through the streets of Chiswick we found a house that had images projected on it. This form of art was refreshing and looked amazing. I recommend anyone in the area to take a look!! Heading back to base we finished up with some wonderful squats during our fitness session to ensure that cold wasn't getting to us!

Join us next week for another run and task !! Remember come rain or shine we are there!!!

Happy running, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!!

7 runners ran the dreaded hill that doesn't look like a hill to shift manure.

With the wind swirling around, we congregated unsure whether we needed layers or not. October has arrived with autumn and darker evenings.

After a warmup and some strong leg - arm co-ordination, we got going running the short distance to Grove Park Allotments where we were met with 115 bags of manure and a few head torches!

Strong scented gardens

It was our job under the guidance of Lizzie, community allotment extraordinaire, to get the bags and barrows full of manure inside the gates of the allotment.

Beware of the manure thieves

It turns out that lightweight Peat is a liar and is pretty heavy but mulch is much easier to handle. Beware of leaky wheelbarrows and tight corners when moving fine manure.

Somehow, shovelling soil passed quickly and we'd gotten all bags inside within our 40 minutes at Grove Park.

Leaving the non-Goodgymmers pretty happy, we 7 wanderers set off back down the hill.

Before we could get rid of the aromas of the evening, it was time for some pair work. Tricep dips, squat jumps, v-sits and mountain climbers coupled with some lamp posts to run to finished off the session nicely.

Time to jog back to Old Spike, catch our breath and stretch off.

Fingers crossed for some nice, clean fun next week.