29 runners wrapped up and braced the cold last night to blast GoodGym Camden into a good start for February!

We were joined by another new face joining the herd - hey Alex! - hope you enjoyed yourself in the spoof Inside the Factory tour (more on that later) and will be back with us again soon. Why not go and give him a cheer for becoming a fully-fledged GoodGym runner now?

After a quick intro speech, Louise took 10 runners over to the American International Church to make the beds, and I explained a little more about our bigger task at Alara Wholefoods before we got outside and stretched.

C4WS Report (written by Louise)

Nine runners came on our 13th visit to the American International Church, helping make 17 beds for the homeless people's shelter. It was almost unlucky, but we narrowly avoided duvetgeddon in the hunt for a rogue bag of bedding! With our human chain in action, we achieved in a few minutes what would have taken an hour for the busy volunteers at the church. Afterwards we took a longer route to Granary Square for a quick fitness session and to take in the new light displays.

Alara Report

17 of us arrived at Alara dreaming of mulch and granola. Alex was there to greet us and, boy, was there a bit to get through tonight, even if we were so many.

Two types of mulch needed to be shoveled (by hand and spade - see pictures!) and moved into two different areas with buckets and wheelbarrows - one of the types was fresh and was used in the permaculture garden and the other was a bit more ripe and needed to be shoveled onto the beds above the tires. Another team were in charge of litter-picking the gardens outside the front of the warehouse. It's lovely to see how much difference about 20 minutes of litterpicking can do to brighten up an area that was otherwise dotted with crisp packets and gum packets. One last team was tasked with lifting and lugging the big branches that were in between the layers of the riper mulch and moving them to the back of the garden. With everyone working flat out and rotating tasks to keep warm, we got everything finished by 8pm and then the real fun began.

Alex outdid himself this time with showing us their operation at Alara; we got a behind the scenes Inside the Factory (BBC2) style tour! From seed milling (a huge pallet-full stacked up with at least twenty 10kg bags takes around 3 hours apparently) to compostable bagging, it was fascinating to see how the production line comes together to make the delicious granola we all know and love. After the factory tour had finished, Alex wizzed us over to the warehouse and gave us all a box of their new fancy product; acai bowl powder!

The extended factory tour meant that we didn't have time for a few laps of Granary Square, but instead ran home via there so we could catch a glimpse at the new light displays. Very Canary Wharf of them, don't you think?

NEXT TIME

Community, Community, Community: Liz has set up a few tasks for us next weekend at Camden Highline. There are three in total and you can sign up to all of them right here.

Next week: We're going back to C4WS next week as normal, but there'll be a bigger task that I'm working to confirm in the meantime. Should know more in time for the Monday weekly email. Get your name down for next week's run here.

LET'S GET SOCIAL! As I mentioned at the end of the run, we've got a Camden Socials WhatsApp group. John has organised a pub quiz for us on the 20th February (Thursday night) that you can sign up to there. The next social after that will be axe-throwing in March (organised by yours truly), so plenty of variety on top of our regular appearances at the pub after Wednesday runs.

See you next week!

Happy running in the meantime

26 intrepid and festive GoodGymers fought through the wind and ran to come along on what is Camden's last group run... of the decade!

Shoutout to Steve for the excellent punnage this week.

We welcomed another soul to the herd - hello Linsey! Hope to see you back with us in the new year. We also had a tourist visitor, John, usually of Birmingham but who had been down doing the Run Leader Training in Somerset House and thought he might come along for a cheeky run! Camden's always open to tourists if you fancy it!

Here is where I'd usually plug the next run, but there isn't one until January now, so please don't turn up to the Living Centre next week because we don't have a run planned!

After a very quick intro as time was against us, we ran straight on to the American International Church to make the beds.

11 men's beds and 3 women's beds were made up and Jonathan (the minister from the Church) told us that the original 12 people who had used the shelter when it opened early last month have since gone on to more stable housing and no longer need the help of the church. What a way to end our December runs with that lovely news.

But that wasn't all that Jonathan had in store for us; there was a carol concert put on by a choir and orchestra going on upstairs so after the beds were made, we hared upstairs to catch the end of Ding Dong Merrily on High! It turned out to be more of a performance than a singalong, but there was a bit of Bach, some brilliant Spanish choir singing and very, very lovely orchestral pieces for us to soak up before going back out into the rain for the slightly damp run home.

It was soon time for us to head back to the Crick and luckily the rain had slowed to the occasional spatter and we wound through the back streets before our stretches and cool down. The pub was absolutely heaving but good numbers in attendance as always- thanks again Abi for being our pub leader and booker, it's always appreciated!

Thanks a lot for coming and getting involved with GoodGym this year, for telling your friends about us and for keeping on and coming back week after week. I might be biased, but I'm pretty sure that Camden is the best of all the GoodGyms and it's all you folks that make it as wonderful as it is.

Hope you all have a happy and rested Christmas break, whatever you're doing. See you in 2020, recharged and ready to go (hopefully)!

2020 and on

NEW YEARS DAY: As New Years Day falls on a Wednesday, Jonathan and the church will be welcoming folks to the homeless shelter and we'll be running a smaller team up there to make the beds again. If you'd like to join, click anywhere in this sentence - we'll meet at the American International Church around 6:45 to make the beds in time for the 7:30 doors opening. It'd be lovely to have you with us and what better way to ring in the New Year?

FIRST OFFICIAL RUN BACK: While some of us will be running back to the homeless shelter on the 1st January, our first group run will be on Wednesday 8th January. We'll be splitting the group again with one half going back to C4WS and the other half doing the Annual Christmas Tree Sprint! More information and signup link is right here.

Aaaaaand breathe.

Merry Christmas!

Ben