Every year the London Marathon raises massive amounts of money for charities up and down the country. At the 2015 race, runners raised an amazing £54.1 million to set a new world record for an annual single day charity fundraising event for the ninth successive year.

The organisation behind the race, London Marathon Events, is also supporting running for a good cause by providing grants to innovative running charities that are changing their communities for the better.

A recent grant of £50,000 to GoodGym (www.goodgym.org) will help the charity to expand across London and will enable it to support up to 5,000 runners to do good with their training over the next year.

GoodGym stands for fitness for good. The charity’s ethos is about helping people find motivation to get active through connecting with their local community and other like-minded people. It’s totally free in locations throughout the UK.

Founder Ivo Gormley started GoodGym after becoming disillusioned with his regular gym visits. “GoodGym came from a frustration with the energy wasted in gyms,” he explains. “Surely there’s something more useful or more fun than pounding away on a treadmill or lifting things that don’t need lifting? The idea is to combine getting fit with doing good. We do this in all sorts of different ways, but most of it involves running somewhere.”

Get involved

There are several ways runners can support GoodGym. You could start by joining the regular run club, which combines a workout led by a professional with some form of manual labour for a good cause within the community. “They happen every week in every area we operate in and you can just turn up. We welcome all abilities,” explains Gormley.

You can also be set up with an older person, who is called your ‘coach’. You will be paired with someone who is isolated and lonely and will visit them once a week. The idea is that having a coach will keep you motivated to run and, in return, you offer your invaluable time.

Finally, you can help vulnerable people with basic household tasks. You can stop off during your run to help change a smoke alarm battery or clear an overgrown garden for someone who can’t do it for themselves. However you choose to get involved, it’s a win-win situation.

A refreshing change

Behind this innovative new running club model is the refreshing belief that not everyone is motivated by competition or repetition of the same exercise day in, day out. This way of thinking, combined with a desperate need in many communities for more involvement from the people who live there, makes GoodGym something of a revelation.

“It’s not your typical running club,” explains Gormley. “Yes, we care about how many miles we’ve racked up and yes, we do a bit of interval training and go to races, but on all of our group runs, we’ll stop off and work hard for a community organisation. It connects you to where you live and shows you another side of your city.”

Making a difference

In 2015 John was paired through GoodGym with his coach Flo, whom he visits every Friday morning. Flo has dementia and was introduced to John because her housing manager could see she would benefit from having someone to talk to.

Talking about a recent visit with Flo, John says: “We were both very happy for that 30 minutes together, and that’s what my visits are for, in my mind. Flo might even carry that good mood into the rest of her day, which would be cool. I know I do; my feet feel a little bit lighter on the run home – 3.3 miles each way, if you’re asking.”

Kevin started weekly visits to his coach Connie in 2014. Connie is 78 and became very lonely after her husband passed away. “To tell you the truth, when my husband passed away I was feeling really down,” she says. “I didn’t really have anyone to chat to about it. In the beginning, I was very nervous about having someone new come as I wasn’t used to talking to new people. But when I met Kevin, we clicked straight away. When I started talking to him, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. He is so lovely and just an honest bloke.”

Reflecting on these success stories, Gormley believes that GoodGym is a great thing to feel part of.

“Seeing the work we do with older people grow is massively rewarding; almost all of the people we’ve paired up consider their runners to be friends,” he says. “People can be left completely alone, so this really is making a massive difference to their lives. Hearing the stories of the birthdays that might otherwise have gone uncelebrated makes me want to keep going and keep reaching more people.

“We don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be in every city in the UK – so this is what we’re working on. We want everyone to know about GoodGym and everyone to give it a go.”

Hugh Brasher, Event Director for London Marathon Events, hopes that GoodGym will go from strength to strength as more people find out about the charity. “We are very proud that our events have enabled participants to raise incredible amounts of money for a huge range of charities over the years,” he says, “but GoodGym is something different and probably the most innovative running club in the world. It’s a different reason to lace up your shoes and one that benefits others as much as yourself.”  

The Running Charity

London Marathon Events also supports The Running Charity, a charity that has created the UK’s first running-orientated programme for homeless and vulnerable young people. The programme aims to engage participants in running-based activity to create a more positive mind-set and enable them to build the confidence and motivation needed to move out of homelessness.

“We started in 2012 with 12 rough sleepers, all of whom were unemployed,” says the charity’s Director Alex Eagle. “Our work focused on traditional youth work skills with a lot of running sessions and 12 months later, our graduates all left the group housed and employed. It was fantastic.”

The charity is now expanding to Manchester and across London and is looking for support to extend its services to more people.

When Stevie, a recent graduate of the programme, joined the group he was a rough-sleeper who was misusing a variety of substances. He was six feet three inches tall and weighed only seven stone. He is now a Level 3 personal trainer, weighs in at around 14 stone and is about to run the 2016 Virgin Money London Marathon this April.

To find out more about how The Running Charity has made a life-changing difference to its programme users, visit www.therunningcharity.org

Source: Virgin Money London Marathon