On a cold and chilly night, 19 GoodGymers came out to do some good around Camden town.

We welcomed a few new faces to the herd - welcome Cara and Sarah! Hope you enjoyed yourselves and will be back with us on another run soon. If you want to get ahead of the game, why not sign up to next week's run right now?

So, unfortunately the lovely Mel from Kentish Town City Farm was off ill, so we couldn't run up to them to take down the marquees from the Apple Day as we'd planned. Instead, we decided to run to the canal behind Kings Cross and do a litter pick, followed by some laps of Granary Square and a fitness game. After a quick intro and warmup - who doesn't love a good lunge - we headed off to the canal.

Our task

Splitting up into pairs, everyone grabbed some gloves, a bag, headtorch and a partner and got stuck in with the litter pick. 30 minutes of solid litter-picking later, we regrouped with some interesting finds including two snapped bank cards, a SIM card and... none other than an actual working mobile phone. After some button pressing, it turned out the phone belonged to a guy called Juan (the run report pun makes sense now, right?) who turned out to be a football-loving American - oh what you can find out from a notifications screen. As we couldn't call him - but found an email address to get in touch with him - we handed it in to the Granary Square security team who are looking after it until Juan goes down to collect it. Well done CJ for spotting it!

I've also sent Juan an email explaining that we'd found his phone. I'll give you updates on the situation. Let's hope Juan and his phone are reunited soon.

Anyway, we're going off on a tangent...

And so, on to the fitness. After everyone was rounded up in Granary Square, it was three laps of the big loop to get everyone warmed up again after what was - by a country mile - the lowest intensity task I've led so far. Following on from this, and to round off the session, we had a good old round of Rock, Paper, Scissors (fitness edition) in two lines. It turned out to be a brutal competition of 3 quick rounds of the age-old game, before the winner would sprint a shuttle run while the loser would do press ups until the winner returned. You'd then move one along the line and switch partners, until everyone had been all the way along the line.

After one more victory lap around the Square, we all headed back to the Living Centre for a cool down stretch and - for some of us - a trip to the pub.

Big thanks to Liz for supplying the bags and gloves for the litterpick and Hanry - as ever - for being the head-torch-bearer of Camden.

A word about head torches from Hanry: It seems that someone might have accidentally run off with one of his headtorches. Could you please have a root around at home and bring it back to the next run?

Next time

COMMUNITY MISSIONS: Just over a week away, there's a great community mission coming up at the Russell Square Gardens - you'll be helping to plant some flowerbeds for David and the team. The task will be from 10am-4pm but if you can only stay for an hour or two, I'm sure the team would be very glad to see you. Sign up asap so we can send numbers to David!

NEXT WEEK: So next time, we'll be splitting the task; it will be the inaugural run of the year to the wonderful people at the C4WS Homeless Shelter. We're going to be making the 10-15 beds they have for local homeless people to get a good, warm night's sleep and it could not be more of a worthy cause. We'll be running to them every Wednesday until they close their doors again in February and will be splitting the group with a different task alongside the Homeless Shelter each week. The other task for next week is still to be confirmed.

Happy Running!

Ben

Knock, knock. Who's there? Hydrate. Hydrate who? Hydrate you 10 out of 10, Hounslow!

Ahem. Last night's sterling effort from Hounslow saw 12 runners tackle a local resident association's rubbish problem, run just over 5k, and smash out some conditioning exercises along the way.

First we cheered our lovely new member Hardip who joined her for her first run last night. Great to have you with us Hardip!

We also said a big well done to Remy who nears her epic goal of 24 half marathons in one year by smashing a cobbly Lancaster course at the weekend (way to go!) and reminded everyone to sign up for the GoodGym Christmas party on the 8th December.

During our dynamic warm up we found out what everybody eats on Christmas day, or the celebration day of their choice. Yes, there were a few turkeys, but there was also duck, goose, a veggie alternative, pigs in blankets, pasta and a chinese takeaway. Delicious.

Then it was time for the run. Our first stop was 2.5k away where there was a pile of litter pickers, bags and gloves waiting for us. The local residents were fed up with their roads being covered in rubbish, and we had been given three areas to tackle. We split the group into two, and got stuck in.

Working hard in our red and black tshirts it seems like we were a pretty good advert for GoodGym, as several people stopped to find out what we were doing and say thanks, including one women with three amazing dogs that we all decided was a very good reward for our work. Five full bin bags and a whole load of cleaner streets later, we returned our litter pickers and set off back for home. There was some nice sprinting along the way, and only that pesky train could stop us in our tracks.

5k later we were back at our starting point and stretching out all our hard work. Next week we're beating the cold at an indoor task with a nice 6k run in total. Sign up here to spend your Wednesday the GoodGym way!