15 GoodGym-ers ran a total of 4.5km to help a care home with a rather unusual task.

It was great to see so many GG-ers at this week’s run, particularly so many newbies! Massive shout out to Jess, Jeff and Nicola who came along for the first time – be sure to give them a cheer on the GG website! (Click their names – you can support each other from each others profiles, too.) Also a big welcome to Tejeswita and Dan who joined the Barnet crew this week from other boroughs. It was such a treat to see so many new faces! (It's also very much a treat to see so many of the same faces, so keep coming back.)

Jess actually decided to come along after seeing the GoodGym BBC feature this week, so that’s exciting! I’m pleased it worked!

Dorian was the first GG-er to join me this week, followed soon after by the rest of the gang. As it was halloween this week, Hazel brought along her cape, which Damian wore beautifully as he lead us up the Bishop’s Avenue to the Nightingale Hammerson care home.

We were greeted by 6 wonderful residents and activities coordinator Chris, who even provided a box of chocolates to share. Our task this evening was to hang out with the residents and tell them about what we do; we came by a few weeks ago to clean out their shed and they were very curious about us. Thank you to Freya and Heather for helping with photo-taking duties. I think today might be the first week I have GG Barnet pictures I’m actually in, apart from Long Lane Pasture! That’s a treat. For me, anyway.

It was a really nice task. Being able to have a direct impact on somebody’s day is a really nice thing and these women were all so pleased to see us. I gave a quick intro into GoodGym Barnet and GG more generally, before the rest of you wonderful runners explained a bit more. We then spent about half an hour chatting and sharing stories. The care home is being cleared at the moment for an upgrade and residents are slowly moving to other facilities, so there aren’t too many people left. Chris said this was the busiest the living room had been for quite some time and thanked us lots for coming and filling it with so much positivity.

She then offered us the common room to do our fitness session in before our run back to base, which was a massive treat! Exercising on carpet is definitely much nicer than tarmac and meant we could do a loads of fun exercises like burpies and squat walkouts. I know everybody loves burpies, secretly. And just look how high Hazel was getting in the picture above! BOOM

We did some squat and side-lunge walks followed by three rounds of full-body strength and conditioning exercises. There was a focus on core strength, because a strong core makes for all the difference as you take on those longer runs.

We then said our goodbyes and headed back to base, taking a slightly longer route home. Special thanks to Teje, Jess, Heather and Jeff for keeping me company at the back of the pack tonight.

After a quick stretch, Damian whipped out the homemade pumpkin seed flapjacks he brought along, which everybody agreed were yummy.

This week’s Barnet Biscuit of the Week is: Party Rings. Classic.

Freya has requested next week we find some ice gems. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Don’t forget this Saturday is the GG Parkrun tour in Oakhill Park, which means it’s on our turf. So we should all go! It’ll be great if you can make it down. The run starts at 9am, there’s no pressure if you wanna go fast or you wanna go slow. If you’d like to sort your DBS checks out, bring your docs along and I’ll do it afterwards.

And Sunday is Zombie Evac. We’re in the 10am wave, so meet at Allianz Park at 9.30 to sort ourselves out. I’ve been offered a free ticket if anyone wants it in exchange for writing a review. They offered it to me too late and I’ve already bought mine! Book here if you wanna play.

Sign up for next week’s task here. We’ll be running to do good nearby. It’ll be fun and good and I’ll reveal more soon.

More pics to be added soon! Just waiting on the ladies to say it's ok.

25 energised GoodGymers ran 6k to the Mabley Green user group to load, shift and tip 1 tonne of mulch on to the bases of 50 baby trees on Mabley Green.

Awesome to have so many new faces tonight!! Hope you all had a top time and really hope to see you all again next week! (If you have any questions please drop me a mail). It was also great to see Kev visiting from Bristol for the evening.

With so many of you running it'll be great to see you come along to the Regents Park 10k on the 6th of November!! All the information about the race and link to enter can be found here. See you there!!

A powerful 3k run down to Mabley Green with a little pause for a a few targeted lower-body dynamic warm-up exercises saw us make good time on one of our longer GoodGym runs.

We picked up a troop of wheelbarrows and army of Spaces then marched back to Mabley Green to get cracking!! 35 dominant minutes of speedily loading the mulch in to the barrows before the pusher burst in to action running 150m to the trees to tip the mulch carefully on to the optimal spots, guided by Jonny from the Mabley Green User group, before sprinting back and going again. We rotated jobs to keep the pace high and got in a little Fitness Fun in the kids play park doing a military style assault course and body weight strength exercises before rotating back in to the Mulch Party.

In 35 quick-fire minutes we moved a cubic tonne of mulch and Jonny said it would have taken his team a whole weekend to get that much done!! Awesome effort!! Look forward to coming back in a few weeks to finish off the pile.

We split up in to groups for the run back the Sexy group led to perfection by Peter, who got us underway, and were chased down by some speedy running from the Speedy Crew to the Race back to Base!!.

A few static stretches and a naughtily loud round of applause finished off a great evening!!

Be great to see you all next week when we go back to our Monster Project at Core CIC to paint and clear out way to GoodGym Greatness!! Please sign up here and come along to some great Fun on a Run

Smooth shovelling

Joel