6 women, 3.2km run, skirting boards / radiators / doors painted and a boxercise mini class all in 90 minutes.

Talk about getting things done!

With an all female ensemble (hello to Jessfor the first time), we set off the 1 mile run to Copleston Centre Church to meet Vicar Paul and Catherine who had some glossing for us to do.

Gloss paint: Shaken or stirred?

We shook two and stirred one FYI. Didn't really see any difference but we will let you know. The centre has a cafe where they host meals for refugee organisations and for homeless people and it's gotten used and well loved over the years. After 45 minutes, we'd covered skirting boards, 2 radiators and 2 door frames and it looked like new!

With the knowledge that Jo might use the hill we had run up as a training aid for the journey home, jelly babies were shared around and what followed was reminiscent of a GG Islington debate. Is there a difference in flavour of the various coloured jelly babies? Differing opinions meant we had to test it out... Luckily, the boxercise class next door hadn't filled up to witness this joy. The answer... Not clean cut as only 2 out of 6 of us got our jelly baby colour correct. (You can cheer Beth and Ruth for this unique talent).

After mentally prepping for hill running, the boxercise class leader threw a curve ball in the shape of pads and gloves and invited us to join their class.

6 jab cross combos with shuttle runs in between for 15 minutes is a lot harder than you'd think. After a few rounds of 'start with your left hand,' we'd sorted our co-ordination out and we're loving it. Both Becky and Chiara were particularly strong boxercise fans.

More than a little warmed up and rid of any midweek stress, we ambled back down the hill to Old Spike, glowing and glossed.

Just in case you hadn't noticed... you can click on each runner's name and cheer them on! Or even add them to your team so you can cheer on all of their achievements (without being too creepy, please).

Last night we ran to the Sue Godfrey Nature Reserve in Deptford for some hardcore rake action. It was brilliant- a good core workout, an incredible sunset and a lesson about our local areas. Blooming fantastic.

London's Grand Canyon

This week we helped out Creekside Education Trust. You can look at their website here. You should- they do some fantastic stuff that you can get involved with. We were met by Nick from the Education centre. He has lived in Deptford for 40years and gave us an brilliant potted history of 'Deep Ford'. It's named after its tidal Creek.

The Creek’s waters, muddy banks and flood defence walls are home to a wide variety of wildlife and the Centre provide a range of educational opportunities for school children and low tide discovery walks for adults.

We were helping in Sue Godfrey Nature Park, a wildlife park that's home to 200 species of wild flowers, shrubs and trees and a wide variety of invertebrates including butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets! They are changing the way the park is managed to enable them to grow more wildflowers. To this end the grass has recently been mowed and they needed some help raking up the hay and tossing in the compost to enable more lovely stuff to grow in its stead.

Rakers and baggers

We split into teams of rakers and baggers and, under an incredibly atmospheric sky we got to work. We quickly filled the sacks and raced them over to the compost pile. It was a brilliant workout and Nick's explanation made the task feel really worthwhile. 40mins and roughly 6 full sacks of hay later we had to make our way for a run so collected all the tools, thanked Nick, and headed for the Thames.

Going through the Gears

On the way home we pushed the pace, experimenting with a few 'gears' or paces as we dashed along the Thames path taking in spectacular views of the city. Brilliant.

See you all next week!

On a chilly evening 28 wonderful GoodGymers met in Camden to tackle two tasks head on!

The news last night was that there are new members of the Camden TaskForce, (Polly, Meredith, Jess, Chris and Frances will be joining Pritesh - woop woop. Also we are racing the Regents Park 10k and Hackney Half Marathon - come and join us!

First Task - Homeless Shelter - written by Pritesh:

On an annoyingly cold night 10 prompt arrivers (including first time runners Laura, Gabriel and Will) set off for our penultimate visit to the American International Church, with myself and Becky leading and back-marking the group we made swift progress to the church and there met Stephanie who doled out our instructions.

Methodical approach

A slightly easier night with only 11 beds needed, we went for the methodical approach this week doing duvets and pillows first before laying out the mattresses and applying our best ‘hospital corners’ to the sheets and then getting the beds evenly spaced out before we could survey our work and fit in a quick group snap.

We then made our way to Granary Square and got ourselves involved in some exercises.

Second Task - Skip Garden - written by Polly and Paul:

Our second task of the evening was to Skip Garden, a project which aims to connect people to each other and the natural world by creating hands-on and reflective opportunities. Today we were tasked with turning the compost machine to keep the garden green and fed. We split into two teams of 8, one led by Lucia and the other led by Polly. The latter wrote the following task report:

Kept warm with a duvet, the mechanical composter likes to be fed a mix of "browns and greens" (wood chip pellets and garden waste). It had only been fed greens recently and had got a bit bunged up.

Browns and Greens

Chief Gnome, Paul, tasked us with turning a big handle on its side which activates a big cork screw, mulch​ing up all the ingredients inside. A bucket at its bottom collect​ed the compost cocktail. This cocktail is then fed back into the​ ​machine with pellets. This must be repeated until it poops out nice brown compost. Lovely.

Liz afterwards said pushing that lever around for the compost machine was like flying around like a hamster!

While Team Polly got to work Paul led the rest of the group to a local square and benches to do some conditioning exercises and intervals. Firstly we started off with some step exercises to strengthen our glutes and legs, then we did an interval session to build fitness and then we did triceps dips and squats for further conditioning.

Then the teams switched and repeated the above. With the arrival of the Task One team we were all collected together for the first time, said goodbye to Paul from Skip Garden and headed to the canal for either a 3 or 5km run.

Next week there'll be two tasks again, it will be the last time we are going to the homeless shelter for the winter season and another group will be off to Camden Foodbank, Simon the Islington Trainer will be leading.

See you in two weeks - enjoy!

PB out.

A small and lovely group of runners won against storm jonas tonight running 5.8km to sort out baby clothes donations for the Camberwell Salvation Army.

Luckily, the forecast rain was a no show and all we had to deal with were the hills around Denmark Hill (the clue was in the name really). We were met by Janet who told us a bit about the baby bank and the refugee centres that they provide for. There are new mothers coming through the refugee centres every 3 days with nothing. Brilliantly, lots of people had been very generous over the Christmas period with baby clothes, booties and random assortments of towels, bibs and even swimwear! Our job was to sort it into sizes and organise a loft full of baby-related goods.

Much cooing and wishing for the clothes in grown up sizes ensued and the new dad of the group was our expert in advising on label-less clothing. We finished sharpish and were given jelly babies by Janet to help us back up Camberwell Grove.

Fuelled by sugar, the squatting and sprinting uphill felt a little less torturous and we finished off with a stretch on the Rye.

Huge thanks to everyone who came along. Next week, we're off to clear another loft but this time it's for the Coplestone Centre. Join up here.

We're also running a starter session on Saturday at 10am meeting at Peckham Rye Station arcade. We'll be done by 11.30 so join us and bring along anyone who might be a bit nervous about getting involved.

A record 52 people turned up for a run at Somers Town Community Centre.

Cooooor. This is me, Shaun speaking. I've been the Camden GoodGym 'shouty running based leader man' since April 2013, and this was my last ever run in Camden. Loads of people came along and made the run really really special. I'm going to miss each and every person who has ventured to Somers Town, been shouted at by Bob the caretaker, put up with my incoherent babbling, and ran across Camden. I've had an amazing time lifting, shifting, carrying, weeding, turning, tossing, painting, delivering, pruning, watering, and digging in the name of GoodGym!

Community Sports

Our job tonight was simple. Camden are trying to get people active, which is great! They're focusing on some of the most deprived areas of the borough, Somers Town and Regents Park Ward, offering free Sports groups or classes in an effort to get people moving. There's women's basketball sessions, free tennis, and jogging clubs available for people to give it a bash. They need to get the message out there so asked us if we could tether some posters to the railing on estates across the area.

Cafe Cacophony

We managed to cram 52 people into a tiny cafe at Somers Town where we divided into 6 teams. Each team was armed with a bunch of posters, some string, a map of their designated areas, and a smart phone. Their job was to dash off as a team and display as many posters as possible in 40mins. As an additional challenge they were asked to pick up any Christmas trees they noticed strewn about the estates. Thursday was the last day people could throw them in the designated recycling bins and we wanted to make sure each and every one was reused!

Dash back to the drop off

When done they dashed back to the drop off (some quicker than others!), where we lobbed them into the recycling dump and headed on our merry way. We had some corking trees- we collected about 12, some more decrepit than others...

We all felt like stretching the legs so took a detour to Granary Square where some people legged it round the block while others watched the Lumiere light show being projected onto the buildings at the square. Cracking stuff- recommend you look out for it this weekend. Here's more details about the light show.

The end

So, that was that! We jogged back to Somers Town, did a stretch, and headed off into the night (well the pub...then off into the night!). Thanks to everyone who made it such a top evening. As Jeffrey the Butler from Fresh Prince once said "See you soon Yo!"