Last night 9 Good Gymers ran over 6.5km to help Sue at St Augustine's Church improve the soil in the church flower beds with composted leaves and grass.

Although it started off as a chilly night, a quick warm up and we were all feeling toasty and set off at a gentle pace down to South Croydon. We arrived at the church to find three runners already there and making a great start on the task. Sue asked us to clear the grass away from a new bed the church is creating and move the turf into some patchy areas of the lawn. It was an atmospheric evening as we arrived in mist and worked to the music of the choir practice. Ingrid also set to work cutting away the grass to make a larger circle of earth around one of the new trees which both makes it easier to cut the grass and to water the roots. We helped move a large bag of compost Sue had made from leaves and grass into smaller bags and carried them round to the new bed ready to make a lovely border.

It was a lot of work all done very quickly and the gardens will look great for it. Join us next week when we will be Keeping Croydon Beautiful.

Today three runners took part in the Croydon 10k Road Race in torrential Rain and a storm warning!

Thunder and Lightening greeted my early arrival at Park Hill to set up the Gazebos and unpack the van of all the equipment needed to put on a great run. I then donned my high vis and took up position at the end of the closed road to direct cars and keep the road clear for the runners. Karim and I then had a great position to see all the runners coming down from the start line and help them dodge the trams as they came to the final stretch before the finish line! Everyone was absolutely soaked from the rain but with big smiles when they saw the finish.

Great running everyone!

Last night we welcomed Lynda, Kate and Stephanie to their first outing with Goodgym Croydon. For Lynda and Kate this was their first ever task with Goodgym. Stephanie was returning to the Goodgym fold having been a member of GoodGym King's College having graduated and relocated to Croydon she decided to rekindle her love of Goodym.

Our task for the night was a visit to Croydon Refugee Centre to help arrange and sort their donation of clothes for their clients.

Ivanka as always was ever so happy to see us, when we arrived at the task she was very proud to announce to the new minister that her little helpers had arrived. The church has recently changed minister and this was his first time seeing the red brigade in action.

Before the CRC had an entire hall to themselves but following some changes the hall is being shared with other community groups so they have to pack away their stock once their clients leaves to prepare the hall for the next users. Ivanka explained that it was a very busy day and at the end of the day her volunteers were exhausted and did not get a chance to check and pack away the clothes rails.

Our task on the night involved going around the room checking the clothes rails for empty hangers, counting and sorting them into categories (skirts, trousers, shirts hangers) to get an idea of the amount of how many items of clothing they provided to their clients. We counted 273 empty hangers but Ivanka also informed us that some families takes the clothes as well as hangers. Regardless of the true total whether 273 or 350, it is good to know that these families have somewhere to turn to for essential items of clothing especially in a time where the weather is colder and current hike in gas/electricity prices for households.

There was also 18 bags of clothes to be sorted and put on the clothing rails which was done by Stephanie, Kate, Lynda, Paul and Ros. Once the clothes rails were refilled and stacked away in the storage room, myself and Ingrid joined the rest of the team to sort the clothes from the bags. Unfortunately time ran out on us so we were not able to label them and put them in the correct order but Ivanka was happy that we were able to empty the bags and hung the clothes on the rails.

We bid our good byes and headed back to Solutions for a few cool down stretches and talked about the other upcoming tasks.

Looking for a local 10K?

Why not sign up to the THE CROYDON 10K ROAD RACE SUNDAY, 23 OCTOBER 20229

We will also be listing some community missions for the race so if you are interested in taking part but not wanting to run and have time to assist with setting up, marshalling and taking down signs keep an eye out for the community mission. For all things Goodgym Croydon

Next week we'll be heading over to Valley Park to assist Unique Roots at the peppermint Centre sign up here.