18 GoodGymers met on a summer's evening to water plants, dig soil, play a tag drill game and run 4km!

With Joel away in France eating desserts Paul Bown (Camden Trainer) stepped in to cover. There was a lot of good and gyming to do but before that we talked about that the news:

• Welcome along to the newcomers this week - Lorraine, Michele and Marjorie! Lovely to have you join us.
• It's GoodGym Monthly Drinks next Thursday at the Star of the Kings, it would be lovely if you could come along!
• Also why not join us for the Cardiff Half Marathon on 2 October, the last in the Big 6 GoodGym Races this year - it's going to be a good one!

Okay onto to GoodGyming; after an active warm up we headed off to Hackney Downs to help HUG, a new organisation, that is helping to create a community garden space in the area, you can find them on facebook here.

We met the lovely Myra who runs the project and she gave us our tasks for the evening, which were:

• Watering the plants, vegetables and flowers in the surrounding garden with a HOSE pipe. Rich took the lead on water with lots of others helping untangle, carry and pull the hose line. Particular thank you to Cecilia who got her hands wet several times turning the HOSE on and off.
• A second larger group used spades and forks to turn and pile up soil in the garden. This was very physical work because of how dry and dusty the soil was. The area which was beautifully cleared will be used to plant wildflowers, which is great for wildlife!
• The final group helped plant new flowers in the garden space and weed around the existing flowers.

Tasks galore!

All the tasks are incredibly important for the growth and sustainability of the garden project space. Well done everyone! Great work!

After a group picture we said our goodbyes to Myra and headed around the corner to do a tag drill game! It involves an individual demonstrating a drill to the group and then everyone does the exercise during the time the individual is running an out and back. It's harder to write down than explain/demonstrate in person but it worked fantastically; we had squat jumps, pushups, mountain climbers, star jumps and more.

Drills, drills and oh some drills

So we had taken care of the good and the gym so it was time for more GYM! We ran 2.2km back around some back streets and through London Fields, despite living in Hackney for about 8 months I still don't know it well enough - thanks for helping with the directions guys.

Finally we did some stretches, felt good about doing good and said "see you soon!"

Joel's back next week, and you are off to Hackney Elderly Caribbean organisation to help with some painting, sign up here.

PB out.