Sprinkling a special dose of Goodgym cheer, 13 radiant runners, pounded pavements, highjacked hills and put to bed PBs on a marvellous Monday night in Brent.

Full squad on deck for the first Monday in November, GG Brent were thrilled to welcome not one, not two but three newbies into the fold. The Super-Spanish addition - Cecilia and Helena and although new to Brent, a fabulous familiar face - Hazel, doing the famous Goodgym borough rounds tour. Additionally awesome was the fact that Hazel had brought along with her some home-baked treats of Brownies and Biccys for afters YAY!!

Joining me (coach Ellie) and our new runners in the ranks were a gorgeous gang of regulars including: Clairey-Bell, Mouse in the House Clare, Tabitha and Rebekah (aka sister sledge), Daring Debs, Lovely Liz, Super-dooper (don't forget the first aid bum-bag) marathon trooper Sadhana and... Man alert Monday: Neil and Enrique YAY.

Confessions before sessions, I had to relay the news that all my efforts to rescue the cancelled tasks had been unsuccessful this week. However, with some quick joined up thinking from Hazel and the crew, we turned our misfortune into a chance to spread the message of Goodgym with a handy leaflet drop, while grabbing the opportunity to stretch our legs and tackle a full on fitness fun and run session in the Wonderful streets of Willesden.

With this in mind, the team bounced into action. Led on in the front by the one and only 'Mouse' we set to work on the 1 mile dash to Queens Park, where the, circumference of the park, perfectly offers a one mile timed challenge op for the troops.

So armed with my timer and cheering lungs of steel, it was 3,2,1 AND THEIR OFF Dashing the fastest their legs could carry them, to set the bench mark.... here's lap one!

Breathless and quite literally steaming, the teams raced in, one by one.... under 7mins, under 8 and under 9s AMAZING Shocked at their own speed, there was no resting on our laurels and after a quick catch of breath off they went again. Incredibly, round 2 brought in consistent times for each athlete, proving there was no fluke and thankfully also..... no puke phew

Even after the epic 2 mile dash, this team of warriors finishing off, only the best way they could......squats of course to the glorious chimes of our Balearic beautys..... This will give us the Culos Perfectos in town* and that is a bunch of PERFECT BOTTOMS to you and me..... HA HAAAAAA

So after such an epic achievement of a session, there was only one way to finish, with Hazel's bountiful bake and stuffing our faces with goodies. Hurrah I suppose it goes to show, we will get the rewards when we Pud-in the work

Until next time x x x x

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

Here at BadGym there are three ways to be evil:

1) Group runs. We all meet up once an week and go and make the borough a little bit more dreadful to live in. We find newly-decorated community centres and graffiti the walls; we visit public gardens, pour bleach over the flowers and scatter dandelion seeds everywhere, and we occasionally "give people a bit of a kick-in"

2) Missions. A small group of runners go to a vulnerable person's house, find a job that they struggle to do themselves and make it even harder. Classic example include putting lots of heavy furniture in front of doorways and removing the handles from saucepans.

3) Coach runs. This is where a runner is paired up with an isolated older person that they visit once a week and terrorise. The basic idea is to get as drunk as possible, get a cab to their house, do a runner without paying your fare and then sit and abuse the older person for a good half hour or so.

Four new evil-doers joined us tonight: 'orrible Oscar, Scary Scott, Spirit Sophie and Haunted Hazel. We hope you hated it and never come back.

So, this evening we paid a visit to Barnsbury Community Centre. Our job for the evening was to pull up flowers and plant weeds. We also had to smear lots of dirt around the new floor tiles in reception. We worked hard at generally messing the place up for a good 20 minutes and it look awful when we left. Brilliant!

And there was lots of getting fat tonight. Atrocious Alex provided gummy sweets and chocolate beans, Dastorous Dan provided homemade ghoulish biscuits and Spooky Simon provided the usual biscuits.

Ghoulish Game of the evening was finding three hidden chocolate pumpkins concealed underneath cones. Can't remember who found them now and I don't care cos I'm evil. BTW They were poisonous! Ha ha ha ha ha!

And also lots of dressing up this evening. See main photo for the efforts. Some clever ideas with Frightening Frances dressing up as "plantar fasciitis" and Ghastly Graham as a Trump supporter, but by democratic vote Bella and Hazel were clear winners and fought over their prize: a little millkybar ghost. I hope it rots your teeth.

Our disgusting debate? The best way to murder somebody and get away with it. Notable ideas: Richard suggested reversing over somebody in your driveway and Chilling Charlie like the idea of Ricin. There were other good ones that I forgot. If that makes you feel left out then GOOD!

I hate you all. Please don't come back next week,
Spooky Si

P.S. there's a picture of a mushroom with another mushroom on it in the photos. This is because I accidentally copied it across with the other photos then thought you might want to see it anyway

9 GG Brenter's ran 6k, to shift 4 wheelbarrows of rocks, 8 of leaves and avoid 1 crafty little fox

On the coldest night of the year so far, the wrapped up and raring to go crew of Brent gathered eagerly at the good old Queensbury Pub on the high road of Willesden, for a housekeeping full of good cheer, good chats and the welcoming of 3 newbies into the fold YAY - The lovely Enrique, our only fella for the night and Sisters Tania and Eliza.

After welcomes and warm-ups the team hot-foot it through the chilly winds down to Harlesden Town Gardens where Gabriel was waiting with his trusty torch. The task to be achieved this night was a Wheel-barrow of laughs shifting piles of rocks to support the development of a rockery and leaves into the newly built comps patch. Needless to say we totally rocked it

After 40mins of back breaking shifts cheered on by a medley of my weird and wonderful spotify treats (summer and holiday inspired) We spaded, pushed and shovelled our way through the lot, managing to avoid Mr Fox who had taken up residence there.

Back to the road and it was fast, fast, fast all the way home. The team were like a speeding bullet, running like a pack of wolves in formation, a beautiful site to behold! Up hills, round bends, through the darkened parks. As we raced through the blackness there was only one thought in our minds, it's head torch season and our short shorts days are numbered.

Back at base we stretched and reviewed. Another epic night, fantastic vibe and laughter that carried our legs through the distance.

See you next time.

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

A whopping 45 Goodgymers gathered in Islington this Monday

A mass of goodgymers flocked to Highbury Pool this Monday, ready to get involved. We welcomed several first timers to GoodGym, why not go and give them a cheer and say welcome to Imogen, Caroline, Sarah, Laura, Susann, Wendy, Claire, another Imogen, Alice, Victoria and Emma.

Congratulations were in order for Patrick on his Berlin Marathon time as well as everyone who went to Cardiff Half Marathon on Sunday. Well done to everyone!

Farming fun at Freightliners

This week's task was with the wonderful people at Freightliners Farm. No one loves a visit to the farm more than GoodGym, even if it does mean shovelling some manure. As it is a short run plenty of people took on the challenge of a longer run with Graham leading the way with some laps of Highbury Fields. The rest of us were too eager to see the animals and headed straight for the farm.

Graham describes the longer run:

A group of hardy GoodGymers set off to up the pace and distance with a few extra laps of Highbury Fields before starting.

Following a few warm up drills (featuring high knees, tail flicks, walking lunges, and sprints, and my best attempt at something resembling an army drill), we headed off to get the extra distance in.

Brilliantly, everyone did at least an extra two laps and upped their workout with an extra 2k - nice! Given the number of people who did extra laps in total, I reckon we did at least 50 laps of Highbury Fields collectively. That's about 10 parkruns, and longer than marathon distance - excellent job team!

With the extra laps under our belts, we ran over to the farm where remarkably we didn't get lost. Well except for that one-bit-where-we-ran-5m-past-a-turn-but-that-totally-doesn't-count. Which as any Islington regulars will tell you - a pretty big success given my navigation skills! A pre-task running session success.

We may have had a big group, but there was no shortage of work to be done and by golly did we tackle it. With wellies and gloves at the ready the first group got stuck in shovelling a mountain of manure into sacks. Working in pairs they tackled the task with gusto. Great job! By the time everyone from the longer run joined there was plenty more work to be done. There were groups:

• Shovelling manure

• Shovelling compost

• Transporting 60 bags of manure (and then taking another 20 bags)

• Sanding a table

• Sweeping the courtyard

• Cleaning the paths

• Weeding the paths

• breathe

Phew, amazing work! And of course a special shout out to the Torchbearers, which has become a bit of a regular task now that Winter is coming, without them we can't see a thing!

It wouldn't be a trip to the farm without meeting the animals so before leaving there was plenty of time to say hello. Once we were all cleaned up we set off back in three groups for a quick run back.

Only in Islington...

Going with the farm theme, the debate this week was "What is the best farm animal?" Going for a very democratic voting system of shouting your answer goat was definitely heard the loudest.

Keeping the farm theme alive, biscuits of the week were a childhood favourite Animals and a random find of Zoo biscuits. Both going down very well post run.

What next?

• This month's drinks are on Thursday 6th at the Islington Townhouse in Angel. Local to us so come along! More info here.

• If you're too committed to the running to be drinking then why not try a Fitness 4 All training session in Camden, also on Thursday. More info here.

• If I haven't tempted you by either of these then we will see you next week!

Awesome effort everyone!

Aidan

Wow, a whopping 12 first timers this evening! Take a deep breath... welcome to Ryan, Cherith, Rhys, Ranald, Liv, Ben, Eva, Kirsty, Pauline, Isabelle, Ksenia and Amel

They joined another 22 of us for a trip up to Whittington Park Community Association where there were loads of little jobs to do. We cleaned windows, we weeded in front of and behind the nursery, we weeded around the main entrance, we had a bit of a clean up in reception, we removed old plants and bulbs from a planter and we planted a new plant!

But all that doing good didn't tire us out too much. Oh no! On the way back to the pool we did our amazing "monthly" Emirates time trial. 641 metres around the stadium.

Fastest lady tonight was Lies with a 2:44 and fastest gent was Hugh with a 2:10. Well done to everybody. Some top efforts.

And a rather popular debate question tonight: who is the most attractive person in the world? Forget personality and character and intelligence and all that other rubbish. We wanna know who's the sauciest celebrity!

The winner with two votes is Ryan Reynolds

Other mentions:

• Clare Grogan (Steve insists that it is the Claire from about 1981)
• Jensen Ackles (the correct answer! He has saved the world several times for crying out loud!)
• Bruce Willis
• Cillian Murphy
• Monkey Bones
• Zooey Deschanel
• Ryan Gosling
• Rachel Riley
• Lily Cole
• Levi Roots
• Sean Bean
• Louis Theroux
• Bananaman (Thanks, Caroline)
• Las Ketchup (I had to watch Patrick and Claire do the dance)
• Heinz Binz (Kike met a real bloke calle Heinz Binz!)
• Lloyd Grossman (ok)

Started feeling rather ugly reading that list, but things picked up again near the end.

Great deeding all. We will see you next week for some FROGGY goodness.

Until then,
Simon