Tonight 31 runners ran around 3 km to paint, water, weed, dig, plant and celebrate!

It’s been 3 glorious good deed filled years since GoodGym Croydon launched and headed off to Croydon Arena in South Norwood. For this special day I decided to be a little bit less ambitious about the length of the run and head off to one of our favourite task venues – Park Hill Rec Community Garden. As it was our special birthday we asked Councillor Lousia Woodley, who had launched us 3 years ago, to come along and send us on our way. Councillor Oliver Lewis also joined us for the send off and headed up to the garden with us for some hard graft. It may have been the thought of the amazing cake that did it!

It was a beautiful sunny evening – just as it should be for a birthday – so after waving goodbye to Louisa we headed off to Park Hill to meet Catherine and Erica who had a list of jobs for us including mural painting, weeding, digging, planting and watering. I think they were a little surprised by the sheer numbers but quickly made use of the enthusiasm and work rate of 31 Goodgymers. Catherine, Erica and Josi had also kindly bought us some bedding plants for our section of the Peace Garden so we will be back to check how they are flourishing.

The time flew by and before we knew it the drinks, snacks and THE CAKE were brought out. Huge thanks go to Rachel for her amazing creation – looked too good to eat but we managed and didn’t leave a crumb. Some runners, not going to name them, even managed 2 slices! There should have been a fitness session however we decided to spend a bit more time in the garden and painting and cake eating and strangely enough nobody objected!

There have been some thefts recently at the Community Garden so earlier in the week we had a collection for some B&Q vouchers so the lovely Friends Group could replace the plants that were taken.

We also welcomed three new runners tonight, Oliver, Karen and Sara - hope you all enjoyed yourselves and see you back again soon.

To finish off our celebrations some of us headed off to the Porter and Sorter for a quick drink or burger and had a great time plotting our next races including the Dino Dash in June and also helping out GoodGym Bromley with the South Norwood takeover at the end of the month. There are also lots of GoodGymers heading off to the London 10K on the 27th of May so if you are going sign-up here and don't forget to wear your t-shirt. Conroy also told the group about the GoodGym Olympics coming up soon and the challenge of writing a Croydon anthem – let’s see what we can do!

Finally, a big thanks to Conroy for letting me take over tonight - I'll be asking for the 4th birthday run too if that's okay!

Next week’s run will be off to a the Peppermint Centre so don’t forget to sign up!

Last night 14 of us congregated in the lobby of Solutions Gym, ready to set off on our run to St Augustines' Church. We welcomed Louisa to her first GoodGym session, Louisa is no stranger to running but following completion of the Richmond Park 10k she has decided to set her sights on doing shorter distances for the time being.

Following a week in Morocco Sarah had returned looking relaxed and rejuvinated from her time away, I could hear Mo filling her in on what she missed last week "the cookie".

Following our warm up we set off to South Croydon towards St Augustines, being one of our longer runs after the first km together we split the group into two Group one being led by me with Daniel and Ian back marking, group two led by Juliet with Nicola back marking.

When we arrive at the task Sue (task owner) had already started. She had with her job cards ranging light to heavy with a list of task for us to complete. Having got to the task first group 1 had first dibs at what task they wanted to do, they selected heavy/heavyish and moderate. Sue relayed what it was she wanted them to do and they set of to their various stations which Sue had already set up prior to our arrival.

On arrival of group 2, they too was given the option of the type of task they wanted to complete, their was a mixture of selections. Task of the night went to Juliet, Sheridan and Ros they had the task that there wasn't a job card for it was the really light option or so they think it was. They were tasked with stopping the dandy lions from spreading. They were asked to go around the church yard to collect the heads of the dandy lions, but leave the daisies and honeycombs. They all had a smile on their faces as they had the pick of the bunch. They quickly collected the head of the dandy lions behind the church and thought they had got them all until they wen to the front of the church and was given a pleasant surprise, there was a lot more in the front to collect.

Mo, Daniel, Sara moved the rubbish closer to the gate for the delivery of the skip (our task on 7th May), once they had completed that they then went to the compost heap to dig it over, remove roots and toys.

Ian, Ingrid, Louisa and Zara was tasked with transporting soil to a patch being prepared to be cultivated but also to sieve the soil to separate the stones and rubbles. They carried the soil over to the patch but with only one sieve, 4 person was too much for the task so Zara and Louisa break away and joined Mo, Daniel and Sara on the compost heap.

Nicola, Ellie and Karim carried leaves to two new compost heaps being built, for future use. At least when we visit next year we can say we were the architects behind the two new compost heaps.

With 5 minutes to go and me informing the group of the time Sue, exclaimed 5 minutes! My first thought was, what did we miss that we would be able to complete in 5 minutes but Sue quickly followed up her exclamation with "Good as I have run out of task for you to do". Having completed all our task listed on Sue's job cards we were treated to coconut pastries and fruit bread while we had a natter with Sue. She asked about other tasks we have been to and wanted to know what other treats we had received, on completion of our task.

Don't quote me on this but who knows come the 7th May we may be blessed with some wine!! It was never requested!!

On the run back we did a few out and back along with some squats, hill repeats and tricep dips. (all exercises except for hill repeats, out and back were completed when we had stopped to regroup) We are now back to completing our stretches outside so this week we were unable to do our abs session, and given the distance covered we did not have enough time for it. However next week our run will be a lot shorter 5 mins walk at the most but I did hear someone say "knowing Conroy he will take the long route to get at least a mile" I can't say they are wrong on that but I do know we will have time for an extended fitness session.

Thank you Nicola for back marking and well done Sheridan on your longest run todate, you survived!!

Next week we are visiting our friends over at ECCO, sign up here its within walking distance.

Upcoming events

• Community mission delivering leaflets about St Christopher's fun walk on 19 May 2019 sign up here

• GoodGym Euro Trip

• Last year GoodGym took part in the London relayand its back again this year with a few added extras are you interested in participating? There is bound to be GoodGym representations again this year.

• One of the most exciting runs I did in 2018, will be on 12 June 2019, 3km team relay in Crystal Palace Park The Dino Dash get your team together if not just sign up here and create a team on the day.

GoodGym Olympics, 3 August 2019 GoodGym Croydon NEEDS YOU!

14 runners dashed to St Paul's United Reformed Church in South Croydon to help with painting a room. This was not before we celebrated the 50th good deed of Nicola. Conroy surprised her with a huge artisan cookie with a GoodGym 50 good deeds t shirt ( a chocolate one of course) at the centre.

When we arrived at the church we were met by the lovely hosts who had prepared all the paint, brushes and rolls our crew needed. We buckled down to painting and some of the runners even did some squats while painting with the rollers.

thats how we roll, we roll like this

Mohamad was a really speedy with the roller and managed to cover the whole ceiling in no time. Lionel appeared to be a great gymnast manouvering on the ladder while painting.

Rolling in the CR0

Martin was amazed with what we had accomplished, within that short space of time we had painted the entire room. He informed us it would have taken him a few weeks to complete the painting. He was really grateful for our help.

Painting finished we roll out

On our way back we took some nice pictures of the sunset in Croydon and quickly ran back to our starting point where the huge cookie was waiting us. Nicola cut generous pieces for all of us and we enjoyed the chocolate and cherry cream cookie ( with a bit of guilt of course!).

The fitness session at the end was replaced by a calorie burning friendly chat celebrating commitment and good deeds!

Next week we will be heading back to St Augustine's church sign up here