You guys! What are you like? You just never let me down :D

On a lovely summer's evening THIRTY SIX of you came down (or up) to the Queen Elizabeth Hall roof garden to chat, to cheer and to celebrate the passing of another month of wonderful GoodGym-ing!

Thank you all!

We were competing with the semi final of some football tournament, the lovely weather itself and the start of holiday season so whilst we didn't break records for attendance I'm still super happy so many of you came down. I think I can safely say you were rewarded with the best location yet and with almost perfect weather too (check out that sunset). By my reckoning we had ELEVEN of you at drinks for the first time so thanks to all of you who braved it, I'm sure it's a bit daunting coming down for your first time - I really hope you enjoyed it and you'll come back again!

HUGE thanks to our guest speaker Melissa for coming and telling us about her amazing running challenge - find out more here and if want to get involved go here! Good Luck from all of us Melissa!

Anyway, thank you so much to everyone - drinks is just me drinking on my own if you don't all come so I'm always so happy to see you all :) ... run the report:

HEROES

As ever you can see the full listings here.

A bit of a Bristol take over again, David Guest in particular featuring in all but the distance table and topping the most cheered - a lot of love for David!

With a stonking 640k last month James Poole topped the distance charts - leaving nothing to chance as he prepares for the launch of GoodGym Redbridge!

A return to the top for Beth 'Queen of the Gazebo' Hoskins with 17 good deeds last month - fantastic work!

Cheers!

Finally the 'cheers given' table, as 700+ wasn't enough Pru pulled out all the stops and cheered 1182 people last month and won herself 'Cheers' as a prize as well!

Massive thanks to Frances who was a wonderful prize recipient on Pru's behalf - Pru your prize is on the way!

Now it wouldn't be me if I didn't cock up the speech somehow and I'm sorry to say that the 50s and 100s didn't get a shout last night but I'm so pleased to announce them here - we had Kike, Maya and James turning 50 - awesome! The infamous Judy Reid turned 100 last month - what an amazing lady! Aidan Padfield from Islington turned 100 - woohoo! Claire Thomson from Brent turned 100 - congratulations! Finally Chris Warmoll from Hackney turned 100 too - incredible! Give them all a cheer!

NEW FEATURE

I'm always trying to mix things up and we've had the current heroes format for some time - it's taken a while but here we have it! I'm hoping that we can get a good snapshot of how GoodGym is doing, but I also feel it's something that you can all get involved wiht by spreading the word about GoodGym and getting people you know involved therefore really having an influence on whether your area tops the table! Oh and please, please, please - let me know if you can think of a better name...

In any case... a massive congratulations to GG Westminster on their winning of the inaugural 'GG most new runners last month' prize!!! Due to a website anomaly they had a whopping 126 new runners!

NEWS

We raced the horse(s)! 53 of us took on all that Wales could throw at us and really very much came out on top!

• Axel came 9th overall!

• GoodGym came 3rd in the club race for solo runners

and finally... the winners:

• Lucy, Andy and Graham aka 'Why the Long Race' came 1st in the mixed relay race - INCREDIBLE!!!
• Leisha, Katie and Jessie who won the best team name for 'Mo Farriers' - SMASHING!!!
• Unofficially we also won the loudest cheerers knocking those pesky Pontypridd Roadents off their spot!

GoodGym is expanding...

In other news GoodGym is expanding and over the next six weeks we have SEVEN areas opening:

• GG Chelmsford - Wednesday 13th July with Ken Hoye

• GG Richmond - Monday 18th July with Mark Barun

• GG Redbridge - Monday 25th July with James Poole (of distance winning fame)

• GG Wandsworth - Monday 1st August with Anastasia Hancock

• GG Colchester - Wednesday 3rd August with Angela Isherwood

• GG Ealing - Tuesday 9th August with Lisa Rattray

• GG Barnet - Tuesday 16th August with Pennie Varvarides

Keep an eye out for more news on these and tell everyone you know in these areas that they now have their own local GoodGym too!

Finally looking ahead we have a few races coming up, check out the details and get yourself signed up:

• GoodGym's parkrun tour continues with Hackney Marshes in London and Ashton Court in Bristol this weekend (9th July)

• GoodGym Camden are running training sessions with a view to getting you race ready for Regent's Park 10k on August 7th

• GoodGym are hosting a special 4 x 1600m (1 mile) relay race at the Mile End Race Track on August 7th. We're limited to 32 spaces at £2.50 each but it should be a fantastic event - get in quick!

• The next 'big' race we are doing is the Cardiff Half Marathon on the 2nd of October - get yourselves signed up for a wonderful weekend on a fantastic course!

Pun time...

These reports really don't get any shorter do they? Apologies but here it is the one you are always waiting for it's INTERNATIONAL PUN OF THE MONTH!!!

June was a good month with a long list of 11 and I really struggled to get down to the five in the shortlist but five we had and with the shortlist going out on twitter we had six votes before drinks even kicked off! A total of 39 votes were cast but by one point, with 12 votes the June winner of International Pun of the Month is...

All you need is glove from GG Islington

A hearty congratulations to Simon and co!

Right, that is that from July drinks, I hope you all liked the new feature, thanks again to Melissa for chatting to us about #RunTheBoroughs and one final thing... we have a new feature!

Yup for the drinks report only, after the coolness that was James 'Barney 'Barnard's Edinburgh Marathon medal you'll notice a picture of some striking shoes in the photo carousel...yup the new feature is the 'Cool stuff from James' feature, every month we'll get a picture up from James of cool things he owns and/or has come across! Hope you all like it! (Ok, we might get rid of this new feature soon - i'll take a straw poll next month and quite frankly James doesn't even know about it).

See you next month, 4th August!

Anywho, thank you all so much for coming, hope for an even bigger better drinks next month - we're going to be in the King's Cross area and drinks will be on the 4th August!

Cheers,

Pritesh

(Many thanks to Chris and Steph for additional photos)

11 runners take on 3km in Camberwell and garden / sweat with joy.

This week guest starred Ana, the new GoodGym Wandsworth trainer (launch day: 1st August) who came along to see what happens in Southwark and put us through our paces.

lunge nice and tall

A warm up on the edge of the rye got us nice and ready to clamber up the hills of Camberwell back to Grove Park Allotments. We met Lizzie there who had some strimming to be done, paths to be cleared and leaks to be found (or not found).

Michael set off to sort out the wild grass, goggles in place, and soon sorted out the orchard into a much more manageable area.

Helena, Matt, Deepak and Zoe got to work clearing the crazy weeds towards the back of the allotment areas.

Joelle and Jess did a sterling job of digging up the flag stones and around a potential leaky pipe under close observations. A lot of sweat, mud shifting and tap testing later and though the leak wasn't found, at least it wasn't in the most awkward place it could have been! Another job for another night? Hmm.

Becky, Ana and Lianne were focused in clearing the entrance of the allotments and watering any thirsty plants in sight.

40 minutes later, and much admiration of the land and how amazing it would be to have an allotment in London, and we were ready to say our goodbyes. After an easy amble down the hill, Ana led us onto the Rye. One lap, timed, at 95% followed by core work. During crunches and planks, we did our best to drown out any cheers and groans from the local pub showing the football.

some excellent side planking!

Not quite ready to finish the session, it was time to set off on lap two to try and beat the first lap. Either the core work had warmed everyone up or a little bit of extra effort had been held back for the final piece of work. Either way, some excellent sprinting to finish off a lovely evening.

The prospect of Camberwell Grove's delightful incline wasn't enough to put off GG Southwark this week. Especially knowing that we were visiting the lady who put the jelly babies in our tagline (the worst kept secret of our borough).

For the first time in weeks, we got to run outside in the dry and ironically, had an indoor task. It was pretty nice to not have to wear waterproofs though. We welcomed Deepak and Chiara along for the first time and had a few regulars to show them the ropes. After a 2.7km run including incline / decline, we were welcomed to the Camberwell Salvation Army Community Centre Church by Janet. Instead of sorting out baby clothes, we were presented with bowls of dettol, cloths, tea towels and lots and lots of toys. They have children's playgroups 3 times a week and the toys don't get a wipe down. So we got to work. Not only were the toys cleaned and dried (and reminisced over - was the green train in Thomas the Tank Engine Percy or Henry?) but they were also sorted into the correct boxes. Please note that kitchen goods and play food are two different categories!

In the last 6 minutes, there was a countdown style rush to see how many vehicles we could wipe down. See photos for an impressive car park of fisher price gangster wheels! As we finished up, in the spirit of Easter, Janet presented us with mini eggs to get us ready for the hills home.

Despite the worry that some people might be sick due to aforementioned mini eggs, we played the chain to make the hill a bit easier. Jogging in single file, the last runner has to sprint or side run up to the front of the group (thank you Simon for that one). Almost to general disappointment, no one was sick and we made it back in time for a quick stretch and a reminder of all of the opportunities for a social drink in the next weeks. tomorrow and next week. In case you were wondering.

Wow, an amazing 31 Goodgymers met on a cold February evening to tackle two tasks and run 5km.

Good news all around, well done Jess Cowan for her 1hr 44 Richmond Half Marathon at the weekend and Francis Powrie for heading 50 good deeds!

After an active and well observed warm up we headed to our tasks.

Alara Run Report:

Group 1 led by Paul and backmarked by Frances headed to Alara which is a wholefoods project which makes lovely products, including muesli and granola! They also manage and maintain Kings Cross Orchard Project. Our tasks were simply splitting into three groups and weeding around the various orchards to keep them protected, we filled 10 buckets full of weeds.

Mmmmm Yacon!

Due to our hard work we were very happy to collect a box of Yacon Granola each. Yacon is a species of perennial daisy traditionally grown in the northern and central Andes from Colombia to northern Argentina for its crisp, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots. Alara grows the only Yacon plants in the UK - wow! With our boxes in hand we headed off to meet Becky's group.

Skip Garden Run Report written by Emily Morrissey (first time at GoodGym):

Group 2 led by Becky, and supported by Meredith and Jess headed on a short and steady run to the Skip Garden (which is a community garden with a twist - it's moveable... This sustainable urban garden really is a charming oasis with wild flowers, vegetables and herbs, beehives and chicken coops.)

Wood x Fire = Pizza

We were welcomed, shown around and introduced to all the fantastic work that takes place there. The team was then presented with a huge amount of freshly cut firewood (used for the pizza oven, fire pit and the tipi stove!) which needed moving to a more convenient location. Two groups loaded and pushed the trolleys and one group re-stacked the wood, lasting about 20 minutes.

Progressive Running

After smashing both tasks we met at Granary Square to do some progressive running. Splitting into two groups the aim was to progressively get faster on each corner of the square, this training is regularly used by Kenyan Runners to develop their pacing.

Lucia (LG) Gobbi looked very involved - just look at her face - see photo above.

Just look at that face!

Everyone did 2 laps and 6 more brave soles did a 3rd lap - corrrrrr nice one!

We all jogged back to Somers Town together and had a nice stretch before heading to the pub and/or home.

Next Saturday we are off to Kentish Town City Farm, it's a starter session but everyone is welcome.

In April we are heading to Regents Park 10k - join us!

See you next week.