GetInvolved

What's the Latin for 'we came, we saw, we painted, we struggled to work out our left from our right, we dreamed of capybaras farms, we conquered'? Actually, you're alright.

Make. Some. Noise!

Mai and Kandy joined us for their first Goodgym Haringey run tonight and they took to it like ducks to water. Make some noise for them! Also, special shout out to Sarah, who soldiered on with a hurt wrist and grafted like a woman possessed much to the health and safety supervisor's chagrin. Woop!!

A Night At The Hall

I'm not going to lie, it wasn't a promising start to the evening. It was dark. It was raining. Frankly, it was cold too. And yet, one by one, the humble heroes of this saga slowly started drifting in, with a spring in their step and a smile on their lips.

Yea, 10 wonderful GoodGymmers came and warmed up under the drizzle of this wintery night by laughing and nominating each other for burpees.

And, lo, down they hurried towards the Chestnuts Park Community Centre where a hall awaited them, prepped to be painted.

And paint it they did, reader. Paint it they did, alright.

Our GoodGymmers scrubbed, cleaned, and painted. After about 40 minutes, we had managed to leave the hall looking gorgeous after a very thorough first coat of paint. And we left with the promise of a prompt return to finish the task.

We managed to sneak in a fitness session in the newly-painted hall too and we played Lunge Opposites. I know, you had to be there. It was fun, though!

Then we ran back to HQ in a huddle, fulfilled with the satisfaction of the job well done. Goodgym at its best, if I say so myself.

See? Heroes!

Next week we'll be making a Kids Centre Super-Duper-Scary by dressing it up for Halloween. We agreed to dress up ourselves so I'll be bringing loads of vegan-friendly sweeties and the best costumes will get extra sweeties. Come!!

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans...

You have the best plans laid out, you think you know what your evening is going to look like, you start thinking ahead for a good pun. It always works as planned, right?

No need to worry. After a last minute task cancellation, 9 lion-hearted GoodGymmers galloped to rescue tonight's Haringey GoodGym task.

The wonderful folk over at the Bridge Renewal Trust offered to host us tonight at the last minute and our GoodGymmers huddled together and ran the whole 2k to the task as a unit. We even managed to fit in a quick sprint race on the way.

At the task, Russel from the Bridge Renewal Trust welcomed us at the Chestnuts Community Centre where we were tasked with bringing a massive circular flower bed back to life. They're hoping to turn it into a community-led food garden, involving local school children. That's all we needed to hear! We weeded. Oh, reader, how we weeded. We worked on this bed whilst chatting away and in no time, it was looking a lot better. We hope we've given the Trust the head start it needed to get the project going and we can't wait to come back and help again.

After a glam photo session, Rock Star Dave led us on a very fun sprint warm up, and then it was a quick 800m dash around an ol' faithful Haringey GoodGym Strava Segment for us.

We said our goodbyes to Flo, whom we are losing to the Goodgyms south of the river and then headed back to home base, tired but happy.

Can't argue with that!

Tune in next week for more shenanigans. Even better, join us!

5 goodgymers came out to help on the day. 2 of us ran 5km that morning at Pymmes parkrun and Alexandra parkrun each. We then all met at Chestnuts Park at 10:30am to help set up. We moved tables, put up signs and handed out 'activity cards' to the children. It was a hugely successful day at Chestnuts Park.

They had tons of activities for children, young teens, adults and the elderly too. There was free zorbing for the kids, face painting and activities such as a bouncy castle. The adults had loads of community stalls to visit, with information on recycling in the community and the redevelopment trusts were there to advise on the new projects being planned. They had a wonderful Zumba session for all ages and then a specialised elderly movement class to encourage those less able to stay active.

Goodgym had a stall too so we raised awareness about the organisation and made some contacts for possible future community missions. We offered people the opportunity to do 1 of two activities to get on our leaderboard: 10 burpies in under a minute (for kids) 20 for adults, or do an 800m Strava segment around the park. We had a few takers and taught people what a burpie was!!

Colin was the organiser from the bridge trust and he thanked us for taking part. He even said they wanted to nominate goodgym for a volunteering award as he thought it was a great organisation! We left with lots of balloons and good memories!!

Last night’s tasks had 11 of us going on a short adventure towards Cheshnut Park to help our friends make the Garden space more inviting.

News

Team Haringey are heading towards Burges park to do a park run this Saturday. Feel free to come and join.

We are looking to build a big Haringey Team for the Olympics. Click here for more info and to sign up

The Spartan Race is in 2 weeks, so anyone interested in doing a different kind of race sign up here

I want to give a big welcome to out first timers Amelia, Nina, Freya, Shanni and Ronnit. Hope the session fulfilled your expectations.

After a nice warm welcome to our new members, we headed towards the green for a warm up to get the body ready for the evening activities. While we were warming up, I decided to get everyone to say their names, number in ascending order and let the group know what their favourite drink is. I was expecting everyone to pick drinks kin to Ribena or Lucazade, all that my ears were hearing was cocktails and wine with one mention of a fruit juice. With Dave as back marker, we shot of down the road to Cheshunt park stopping mid journey to do a wall sit while we waiting for the runners at the back.

At the park, we had a mixture of Jobs. Litter picking Moving logs Shovelling wood chips Carrying the wood chips in the wheelbarrow Spreading the wood chips on the path Spreading the mulch on the plants

The group got split into 3 groups with everyone taking turns on trying a different task. Natasha turned the task into a workout by filling up the wheelbarrows and running with it between the 2 destinations. Rita was injured but with a “Never give up” attitude, she was determined to be useful and helped pick up the litter and spread the mulch all with one hand across the plants with a little help from Ronit. Nina, Freya and Dave picked up the mantle of spreading the wood chip throughout the path and inside the hut with the sun roof. Marusha and Kipil stood watch over the woodchip and would shovel them onto the wheelbarrows for Shanni and Natasha to carry them over to the path and Hut. Then to make the work go faster, Amelia and Latoya would help Shovel the mulch on to the wheelbarrows but they also would carry the mulch on the spade to the Hut and path too (Top Heroes).

The task got finished around 7.55pm and the difference could really been seen. With the early finish of the task, this meant there was time for a Chi workout and a time trial. The workout lasted around 10 mins. The moaning meant they were doing the exercise properly. We engaged arms, legs and core with little time to rest. Rita got the hall pass from me to go and use the park gym equipment due to her injury. The task got ended with a time trial. It was not a race but a marker to see how fit someone is going with everyone’s timing going lower and lower.

These are the times: KG 3.00 RP 3.11 DM 3.22 Rita 3.27 ST 3.52 NC 5.05 FJ 5.07 NT 5.08 LS 5.20 AH 5.27

Well done for taken part everyone, hopefully next time we can improve on our times. Feel free to add the Whats App group which is on the e-mail and go on runs with other members of Goodgym Haringey.

7 runners ran 4km to help the Friends of Chestnuts Park weed and mulch round the new trees.

Well six runners. Big cheers to Marusha, who wasn't running this week, but cycled alongside us on a funky rented folding bike. Francis was our tail runner this week. Abby rocked up just as we headed outside for the warm-up, so missed out on Rita's impossible impossible talent ;)

When we got to Chestnuts park we were shown the baby trees, which we'd previously helped by hammering the supporting bamboo stakes into the ground. The poor things were being invaded by cow parsley. So we split into two teams to tackle this task. Weeding round the trees, and fetching mulch from the other side of the park, to spread and prevent future weed growth. The dust and pollen flying around were triggering a few allergies, but wheelbarrow duty seemed to be a good way to avoid the worst of it.

With a good stretch of path done, we moved onto the fitness session. We voted on Ultimate Frisbee, or the 800m Conkering Chestnuts dash?

Why not both?

The Frisbee was a great high intensity exercise, with plenty of bursts of sprinting to get into position. I failed to keep score, but pretty sure team Primary Colours T-shirts edged it. #RedThunder!

And even after that, Francis managed to set a Personal Record for the 800m sprint! Give him a cheer.

Next week, we're heading over to Tottenham Green, hope to see you there!

This week seven brilliant GoodGym-ers ran 2.5km to help Chestnuts Park mulch trees. We were joined by THREE new runners: Natalie, Sophie and Raphael – Give 'em a cheer!

After some traffic issues and a minor locker malfunction, we were off to a late start. I stalled for time with bonus warm up exercises and some resistance running in pairs, while the technical problems were dealt with inside.

We then made our way to Chestnuts park to meet Ceri and co. We were quickly assigned our tasks, with half the team on digging and laying duties and the other half on mulch collecting. In half an hour we'd re-mulched seven fruit trees, some of which still had some left over from when we did it last year. We met the famous Willow Weaver and were told maybe we could do some weaving next time, which is a very exciting task prospect indeed.

We then said our goodbyes, packed up our tools and headed over to our starting line for our Chestnuts 800m dash. Some real speedy running from the gang, but with some rather twisty arm drives - so we focused on getting that alignment right, building power in the elbow drive and trying not to cross the hands across the body. This was particularly challenging for all our newbies who'd not done it before, but over time these things get easier. It takes time to relearn new shapes; but the more you practice, the more natural these things become and then the more efficient your running will get.

We then made our way back to base, with Cathy our trusty back-marker and Hazel speeding ahead to lead us home.

This week's pun was the brain child of Ollie