11 runners ran 3.5km to forage, weed and dig at Grove Park Allotments

It's Wednesday and you know what that means. Getting fit and doing some good with GoodGym Southwark!

A big old welcome to Debbie and Chris who came on their first ever GoodGym run last night. Give them a cheer!

News

• Tonight is the GoodGym wide social. This month it's on tour in South London woohoo! It's a great evening and a chance to meet some of the wider community. It's being hosted by GoodGym Bromley at the Bridge House by Penge West station. Sign up here!

• We're recruiting Taskforce! Taskforce are a group of volunteers at Southwark who help the area flourish - organising socials, being lovely and friendly on group runs, chipping into social media, promoting wider GoodGym activities. The role can be whatever you want it to be! You have to have done 10 good deeds minimum. If you're keen or want to find out more whizz me and email - lucyj@goodgym.org

• On May 27th I'm leading a long run from Battersea to Richmond. There'll be pizza at the end! To find out more and sign up to join us use this linl.

That's enough of the business!

Every weed and the kitchen sink!

11 of us set out for some running-specific dynamic warm ups on the green outside Old Spike Roastery and then set off up the hill to Grove Park Allotments. Liz at Grove Park knows us well so it's always lovely to see her. She split us into groups - foraging for nettles and wild garlic, weeding sticky willy (yes, that's the technical term!) and digging out fresh earth for the plots. The nettles were going into nettle quesadillas - apparently you treat them just like spinach! The wild garlic was delicious and we all ended up smelling rather strongly...

Five bags were filled by the industrious weeders who were instructed to remove the sticky willy and blue flowering weeds from a bed (but not too many because the bees just love them). Meanwhile the forages were hard at work and learning about the best places to pick nettles and wild garlic - see you in Ruskin Park at the weekend ;) - the diggers dug and two strong runners moved a vintage sink. The sink had to be gently rolled over to an area of plots that is used by asylum seekers in the area. After twenty five minutes of hoeing, weeding, digging, rolling and picking we gathered around for a bit of fitness- but not before finding out about a great spot in Ruskin Park for finding berries and musing on making our own Jam - GoodJam!

To warm up we jogged across the tennis courts by the allotments, getting progressively faster until we were really powering. And then we got ready to meet Sally.

'Who on earth is Sally?' You cry!

The Sally Squat challenge is done to a Moby song with the lyrics 'bring Sally up' and 'bring Sally down'. We last did this in February and the team really smashed it this time. We gave our legs a good shake out and set off back down the hill (phew!) to Old Spike for a stretch.

Great work team, we got loads done for Grove Park and there's lots of exciting projects happening there this summer that we can help with.

Next week we're at a community garden in Camberwell. It's a shiny new task hooray! Sign up here.

See you next week. Keep running happy!

Lucy