26 GoodGymers ran 4K to Haggerston Park and shoveled, shifted and raked 10 tonnes of wood chip to make 100 metres of path for Hackney City farm.

Great to be back!!

Lovely to have you all along for some GoodGym fun after our Festive break.

** News** Massive shout out to Danny and Stefania for completing their 50th GoodDeeds!!

Chi let us know about the assault course training sessions that will be taking place twice a month leading up to the ** Spartan Race** in May!! Get yourself signed up for the training sessions. And the volunteering and racing info for the Spartan Race.

Thanks to Clair for the shout out to this weekends Community Mission in Abney Park! Sign up here.

So with everybody ready are raring to go after our 2 week break we headed to Haggerston Park for some community minded graft!

A nice and chatty 2k run with everyone catching up on various adventures and a few introductions to the GG first timers saw us head south to Haggerston Park to meet park ranger Vince.

With a big group it was great to be with Hackney Parks who had plenty of tools for us to get a grip with.

Grabbing wheelbarrows, shovels and a couple of rakes we set off at a Kamikaze pace doing shuttle sprints from the 3 huge piles of wood chip mulch to the path we were creating.

The path is the viewing area from Haggerston Park into Hackney City farm and is very well used but gets really muddy in the Winter. Our efforts this evening will allow the park to be usable throughout the Winter giving often children the opportunity to see and interact with farm animals.

A rapid fire shovel, shift and tip powered along the thick 6-8inch deep mulch path lots of interchanging of job kept up the pace and allowed us to complete 100 metres of path making a massive 10 tonne dent in the mulch pile!!

Think we will be back soon enough to complete the job!!

With time ticking by we ran with a little more pace along the river back to base and were all stretched out on time with a top all around physical workout complete!!

Same time same meet place next week for done more GoodGym Hackney action, See you there!!

Smooth Running

Joel

p.s thanks to all the back markers and Chi for the pictures for helping out massively this evening 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

20 GoodGymers ran 4K to Hackney Wick Community Garden to pick up 2 huge piles of sticks and be treated to an amazing Summer BBQ!!

A run with a difference this week!! First we welcomed Danny to the GG record books!! completing an his Good Deeding Century in an astonishing 162 days!! Going through the gears like Jos Butler (cricketer) to complete 50-100 GoodDeeds in 52 days!! 👏🏽👏🏽👍🏽👍🏽💪🏽💪🏽 well played sir!!

We ran down through the beautiful Victoria park past the greatest Kids Nursary in the world to find a spot for a 10 minute body weight circuit blast! Hitting up some strong leg work out with a little core and upper body at the end. Before we jogged around the corner to the Hackney Wick Community Garden.

We got stuck right in with moving pallets, watering a very thirsty garden and getting sticky with 2 huge piles of sticks!

Lifting, shifting and tipping big bag after big bag of sticks as well as hydrating the flowers, herbs and vegetables as well as a solid shoulder workout on the wooden pallets we certainly earned our feed!!

What a feed it was!! As a special reward for our year of hard graft in the garden an amazing array of exotic and magical food was laid on many of the ingredients grown in the garden!! Lots of chat, eating and smiles before we drifted off into the night. (Sorry for lack of BBQ pictures! I got sidetracked eating).

See you next week

Smooth Running

Joel

21 sun drenched GoodGymers ran 5k to Help Hackney Parks by trimming 200 metres of overgrown hedging.

With the sun out it was get payback for the sub zero winter sessions by making the most of a great evening!!

This week we welcomed some amazing GoodGym first timers for their maiden voyage as well as GoodGym International on Tour!

Expertly leading the 2k charge to Hackney Downs was Mirelle. Where we met up with the Parks team and tooled up!

Being a little light on tools we split the group in two and with the first group snipping away cutting the super long hedge row back off the pavement but also down to a perfect spurt levelled night the rest of the crew headed over to the East side of the Park.

For in inaugural running if the Anna Km we decided on 2 permanent start and finish points from the expert course measuring by Anna during the day. We then burst into action like lightening bolts around the park! Digging deep in this test of speed and endurance we powered through the line in a range of very impressive times and awesome running efforts!! If you recorded the time trial on Strava tag it in the description with #GGOlympics2018 check out the categories and Strava settings info here.

A quick switcharoo and the Time trailers had some Shear delight as they tackled the hedge trimming while Time trial 2 got underway blazing a trial around Hackney Downs!!

Just enough time for an GoodGym Cardiff Tour picture with the holly flag and bagging up all the foliage into big bags before we were expertly guided back to base with the tag team of Alex and Emily.

Thank you all so much for coming along and hope to see you again next week!!

If anyone fancies coming along for the GoodGym Olympics on Saturday afternoon here is all the information.

Smooth Running

Joel

23 energetic GoodGymers ran 9k to shovel away and create 100 metres of running track around Clissold Park!

A soggy February evening was no match for our enthusiasm!! We were honoured to have along Anji for the session the newest trainer to the GoodGym family who starts up Newcastle in the next month or so. Think we showed what an action packed GoodGym evening with plenty of smiles is all about.

Great to have so many new faces along for the session to, you picked a good one but FYI that was the longest run we do so all other sessions you will have no problem with!!

Sorry about the rather frantic start to proceedings, fighting against the clock and with random things going on I probably rushed us away a bit. Huge thank you to Peter for saving the day!! With some last second bag storage!!

Off we ran to the northern tip Of Hackney working the faster running streets and avoiding as many traffic lights as possible!! A quick pause to help a slightly stranded cyclist with the biggest trailer ever, which was in fact too wide for the bollard gap!! Oops

With 4 and a bit k on the watch we arrived at the edge of Clissold Park to meet Quinton, we tooled up and got down to action!!

Working in small teams on each mulch mountain to spread the chippings along the path trying to cover as much of the thick mud as possible!!

Lots of techniques on show from the shovel, barrow and tip, to the shovel and toss we made great progress!!

With the mountains going down rapidly and the paths coming along brilliantly we were only losing 1 battle and that was against the time!! Splitting up for the way back the Steady runners lead by Quiz Master Ros nipped out of the top Gate and headed for base!! The rest of the squad squeezed out a few more minutes of graft then carried the shovels and wheelbarrows the 500m back to the lock up before steaming out of the park in hot pursuit of the the lead pack! This was doubly important this week as Peter had the keys to the van so no one could go home until he got there!

Almost like it was planned 4.5k in record time with Speedy Patrick charging back to base we all arrived simultaneously!!

Ros had the question of the day perfectly set up for Shrove Tuesday!! The World record for Highest pancake toss??? 9.47metres of a flip!! We had GoodGym first timer Sam

A quick stretch out high 5 and we were away for a few well Earned pancakes!!

Thanks for coming along and working/running so hard tonight!! Top team effort!!

Catch you all next week! Same time, Same place!!

Smooth Running

Joel

p.s thanks to Anji for the extra pictures!! Top work to Tom Hill who wasn't even on the run for the pun!!

17 brave Hackney GoodGymers ran 10k touching nearly every corner of the borough.

The cold was no match to a strong band of GoodGymers this evening unfortunately it was too much for Hackney Park Rangers!!

After a strong running start to the session where we powered out 4k to Clissold Park ready for action to continue to create the new running path around the perimeter of the park. We waited for our park Ranger, but ever a few shouts into the darkness didn’t work so we had to roll with plan B!

Splitting up into two groups we had the first pod run the way we came 4k back to base while the rest of the squad headed out to explore Hackney near and far on a 6k loop! The 6k loop felt a little like the running bus as we dropped runners off Home at various points on the run. Even time to drop into Core CIC to see the building we helped renovate look so good!

Rounding it out past the town Hall to click over the 10k and giving GoodGymer Joel his running distance PB!!

Sorry about the change of plan tonight but sometimes things happen!

Next week we are off to Abney Park, so sign up and come along!!

Smooth Running

Joel

23 non stop GoodGymers ran over 8k to Clissold Park to lay over 100 metres of Mulch path for the new all weather running trail!!

Are January Mulch Marathon continued but this time with our first longer run of the year!!

Setting off at a dash to maximise our time even picking up Alice on the way. We headed a wiggly 4k our to Clissold Park to meet Hackney Park Ranger Bruce.

Tooling up in the well stocked shed on the far side of the park we go straight to work. Splitting up into little teams each team attacked a Mulch mound spreading it out on the pre dug track.

A variety of techniques on show with the shovel and barrow, rake the mulch mountain and even the scoop and chuck used to devastating effect!

Working a pace with time ticking we pushed on beefing out the paths to maximum thickness and taking down 6 huge mulch mounds.

Employing a staggered leave to use every last second at the task we got the Sexy paced runners leading the charge back to base then once the last chip had to been raked the speedy runners zipped down the 4.5k route back to base picking up some serious pace along the way!

Great effort on show by all and loving the Team Hackney vibe!! Hope to see you next week for our Group Run or if you are around come along to the Hackney Starter session and Parkrun on Saturday morning at the Marshes Centre.

Smooth Running

Joel