Returning to St Paul's for part two of the Shadwell church's summery refresh, five GGers put in a greyt shift painting the outdoor railings. The black paint was chipping away and Chloe, Kitty, Ilana, John and Sam dedicated two hours of a warm Saturday morning giving it a smart new colour.

The church leaders kindly provided coffee and pastries to keep us fuelled and plenty of conversation, about the outdoor gym classes the church's fitness team provides and their backstories of moving to the area from Germany, the States and other places. Many of them loved hearing about the work we do all around Tower Hamlets and we'll hope they can come along to a task as a GoodGymmer soon!

Earlier in the morning we also dealt with fallen leaves in the church grounds, using a battery-powered leaf blower and a good old fashioned broom.

Today's return to Mr J's involved framing and hanging some further guitar heroes of his on the wall of fame - we're on first name terms now, so it was a case of getting Carlos, Jimi, Jeff, and John Lee successfully hung - and whilst I was doing this, Mr J chatted away and played various YouTube music videos on his TV - it proved to be a highly entertaining afternoon, and by the end I had 3/4 of the band on the wall - there wasn't enough space for Carlos in the living room, so we agreed he could wait for the next visit...Mr J assured me there were only a couple of other guitarists that he wanted, and that would then complete the set (and the task!).

The highlight of today's visit to help the chatty Ms J wasn't the changing of the battery in her smoke alarm - albeit I was grateful for the step ladder she had to reach the unit in question - but her supplementary request to help get her doorbell working again.

She had a plug in unit that had stopped making a sound (a vital part of any functioning door bell...), and a complex instruction booklet. I discovered the unit has 55 different "tunes"...brilliant...and Ms J was keen to get the Cuckoo sound back as her tone of choice.

After manually scrolling through what felt like 54 of the 55 very tuneful options, we eventually found the Cuckoo - I ran downstairs to press the button and there was cooing to be heard from upstairs...

A special run, this one - a magical mystery tour of the locations that made up the first ever group run and the first ever coach run - from over 16 years ago (💾 📼 📟)!

Why? Well, to bid farewell to a special guy. He's tall, he's pale, he's handsome, he has an OBE. It's goodgym's founder Ivo Gormley. Many words were said about this man at the leaving party after the run, at the beautiful Calthorpe Community Garden, so we are not going to attempt to do him justice here. But the fact that a group of otherwise strangers, all wearing their red and black uniforms with pride, were gathered on the steps of York Hall (can you use their toilet? NO) a full sixteen years after the first group of otherwise strangers gathered on the steps of York Hall, to run around and help some people, has to mean something about how powerful and enduring Ivo's idea has been.

Warm up? LEG SWINGS UP THE WAZOO 🦵🏿💨 💨💨 - led masterfully and mindfully by Ade - along with some other limbs and muscles essential for running.

Bags loaded up in the Mechanical Cycling Machine™️ (it's Fast Boi Shaun Dixon on a cargo bike 🚚), we are led off by Euclides Montes who, by his own admission, doesn't actually know the area at all. But who cares?! It's the running that counts! More being lost equals more running! For the relatively small Venn diagram of people who were both a) on a goodgym run and b) knowledgeable about football, Darren performed the role of Roving Reporter (bluetooth speaker) with the GOALS! GOALS! GOALS! from England's match against DR Congo. There were indeed three goals but it wasn't a pretty picture for the 68 minutes between goal 1 and goal 2. We ran past some awfully concerned looking pub goers! But it had a happy ending WAHEEEYYYYY ⚽️.

First stop (probably, can't remember the order because the goals were so compelling) was St Hilda's East Community Centre - the site of the VERY FIRST GOODGYM GROUP TASK. In 2009, Ivo and 13 others emptied a cupboard. And how! St Hilda's is awesome - long-term friend of gg Tower Hamlets, the Centre (led by Lucy) provides bilingual advisory services around employment 🧑🏾‍⚖️, offers activity clubs to combat loneliness 🎯, exercise classes for the elderly 🪑 - it's the kind of place that communities across the country utterly depend upon.

Question, is it possible to belong to goodgym for 12 years and still not know the name of common little yellow flowers 🌼 that come in pots? Answer: Yes! But we planted them on the roof. Those who were particularly confident at differentiating between plants (alive) and plants (dead) also performed a valuable weeding service (let's hear it for weeds 🌱!), leaving things very spruce and cheery up on the terrace for users of the Centre to enjoy.

Next stop, just round the corner off Arnold Circus, where one Ian Drysdale (runs a long way, never looks sad 👨🏻‍🦱) gave us the next bit of the history tour. DID YOU KNOW that Ivo and Ian worked together in a social-enterprise-cum-think-tank in Shoreditch, before goodgym even existed? If you didn't, you could guess. Ian showed us the EXACT SPOT where Ivo first turned to him and said, "Ian I have an idea about a club where people run around and do helpful things instead of just be in the gym" and Ian was like, "WHAT? No Way!" and Ivo was like, "Yes absolutely WAY and I'm doing it, and you're DOING IT WITH ME because you know about computers 🤓 and I only know about films and being kindly." I am fairly confident this is what was said. And so goodgym became a thing with a name and a team.

One! More! Stop! It was only TERRY'S HOUSE wasn't it! "Who's Terry?" - have you been living under a rock? Terry was the clay-pipe-collecting (no, still no idea), amateur-boxing, newspaper-reading, Ivo-appreciating elderly man who became the defacto first-ever goodgym coach. Ivo used to run to his house and there they did have a chat, and that really was it and that was kind of the point. Another goodgym man John Hunter (👋🏻) has also been a long-time coach visit-doer and so said some words about this. Those words were like: "Having been running to my coach Florence 👵🏿 for 6 years, and then Richard 👴🏻 for nearly 2 years now, I have learned a couple of things about what it means to make these visits. It is a friendship, not a service, and it has the potential to be profound for both of you." They were very serious words and I'm not crying, you're crying.

With that, the history had been retold, and it was time to jog on 🏃🏻‍♂️🏃🏻‍♂️- to Calthorpe, and a garden full of over..ooh, a hundred? people with love and admiration in their hearts for the phenomenon that is goodgym. Ivo is a very humble man, but let's be honest, it wouldn't exist without him, would it?

A large group of goodgymers old and new joined Ken on a pleasant Monday evening for the usual spot of gardening in the cemetery park. Following the heatwave there was lots to be done. This week’s task was tackling another ‘verdant villain’ called Hogweed. This piggy plant hogs all the nutrients and sunlight and spreads rapidly to the detriment of the surrounding nature. Ken explained the importance of other nearby plants which attract rare species of bee to the cemetery park and are vital to the ecosystem and threatened by the invasive hogweed.

We set to work with our gloves, loppers and secateurs clearing the weed from a triangular patch near the pond. The wheelbarrows filled up as we cut stem after stem, then it was off to empty them on the pile. It was great to see the progress of the patch we cleared in a power hour of Goodgym effort. A huge welcome to our three new Goodgymers; Ana, Joely and Nuunuu. Thanks for all your help and we’d love you to join us again soon!

We convened at Shadwell station, sheltering from the afternoon heat, shortly joined by John, Darren, and first-timer Kelly (welcome Kelly!).

We headed south towards Shadwell Basin, dropping leaflets at Shadwell Gardens and various churches along the way. Highlights included a promising chat with a potential task owner at Glamis Adventure Playground, and a detour to the Outdoor Activity Centre where many locals were attempting to cool off in the water. Kareem joined us just in time for a well-earned hydration break at the historic Prospect of Whitby before we pushed east towards Limehouse.

We paused to admire some previous GoodGym handiwork at The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, and made a valiant attempt at leafleting Moo Canoes (surprisingly closed on a sunny Saturday). We called it a day at Limehouse Basin with a celebratory drink at the Cruising Association, having navigated our way through a stretch of East London many of us had never explored before.

Join us next time as we continue spreading the word across Tower Hamlets.