Lots of Bank Holiday goodness done and fitness gotten this eve.

Welcome

Welcome to Ruby who already volunteers for Age UK and Send a Cow but wanted to do even more, and welcome to Simon F on his first visit to Islington after visiting GG Hackney once before. We also said hi to Marco, the first ever member of GoodGym Islington, who hasn't been since our launch event back in January 2015!

Unobservant

Nobody noticed the "mention this line and get a prize" bit on the sign in sheet. What am I to do with these Curly Wurlys I got as prizes?

Anyway, we had two tasks this evening. Six were needed to go and tackle some elder roots over at Thornhill Square Gardens. Here's Aidan's account of the evening:

Thornhill

6 eager GoodGymers took on the challenge of the longer run this week...well a bit longer...nearly 2km. Dropping off the main group at Barnsbury we continued on to Thornhill.

The task at hand was removing the unwanted plants and roots from around the garden, plenty of challenges for us to get stuck in to. We definitely had the right equipment for the job with a variety of saws, shovels, forks, secateurs and an axe. We all got stuck in and showed those roots who was boss. Everyone had the satisfying feeling of triumphing over nature, with Steve commending newbie Ruby on her upper body strength for launching some roots out of the ground. We did have one casualty, sadly one root was too tough for the fork and we had to say goodbye to one of the tools, RIP fork you did some great work.

After a quick tidy up and photo we headed off ready for the hill training!

B. Square

The rest of us nipped over to Barnsubry Square to meet Lucy, Carmela and Wesley the dog. We had a few jobs to do: getting rid of weeds (so many weeds), doing a spot of watering, a little bit of mulching and a dash of pruning. Most of us had a biscuit. Graham didn't cos he was feeling ill and delivered the line of the evening: "Well, I bought some reduced pineapple juice from Lidl..."

Hills

There's a little hill by the pool. It's hardly even a hill, so we figured nobody would notice if we made them run "up" it. The prescription was simple: run up to that bin hard. When you get there turn around and jog back down and repeat for 7 minutes.

Heroes of the evening: Marco and Jill who were the only ones hard enough to chuck in an extra rep when the 20 seconds remaining call was put out. They won a Curly Wurly (Marco didn't even know what a Curly Wurly was until about 20 minutes prior to this)

Meta

We went meta with our debate this evening: "What should our debate be for next week?". Some awful suggestions and some good ones:

• "Would you rather have no legs or no arms"

• "Best time of the day to train?"

• "Cyclops or uni-boob?"

• "Blackpool or Brighton?"

• "Should headphones be allowed in races?"

• "If you wake up late - say at midday - then you eat, is that breakfast or lunch?"

Marco suggested "Who will win the Euros" and Ruby thought a discussion about The EU would be a good idea. Clearly they weren't aware of things we should never debate at GoodGym Islington

Anyway, the headphones one from Simon F got the most votes, so we'll be discussing that next week. Then we'll do all the others.

See you next week for a brand new task and the re-introduction of our monthly time trial. Oooh.

Simon

Thirty Seven delightul Islingtonians were raring to get out there and be good, do good and look good last night. Let's give our first timers, Katy, Ranj, Selina and Colleen a massive cheer.

So, THREE tasks means three mini reports. Here we go:

WHITTINGTON WANDERERS

John and Steve led a crew of 10 people up to Whittington Community Centre for a spot of weeding. A place we journey to every couple of weeks. I don't know what they put in the soil in Whittington, but the weeds seem to grow with ferocity, so there's always plenty to do. That said, there was a bit of uncertainty over what was a weed and what wasn't. A debate ensued, which is just as well because we had forgotten all about Simon's debate......oops!) Weeds? Some said anything green, some anything not pretty. The superficiality of modern life won through, and we yanked out all the ugly weeds and left the pretty ones in place to brighten up the place. Job done, we jogged back a bit early just to make sure nobody stole our seats in the pub.

GORGEOUS GRENVILLE

It's been a while since we've been to Grenville and a few of us had forgotten that's it's quite uphill to get there. But having not been there since the winter, it was lovely to see it in the sun! We had three tasks to tackle at the garden. The most popular was varnishing the raised flower beds, but with only six brushes to use the task was taken by the quickest to grab a brush! We also had a classic task for GoodGym...shovelling and moving soil. The guys eagerly grabbed some forks and shovels and got it all cleaned up, sieved and into bags, ready to be used in the garden. The third was to rebuild a bug den (no we didn't know what it was either) that had fallen down. After a bit of creativity and a balancing act the bug den was rebuilt as a 5 star hotel to house all creatures great and small, see photo. After a quick team photo we started a much nicer downhill run back!

BARNSBURY BEAUTIES

A lovely outing to Barnsbury Community Centre for 12 of us. We had two jobs: Del, Will and Mel planted an olive tree, which looked simple, but wasn't so straightforward when they realised they had to dig into what was practically concrete. The rest of us set about painting a couple of wooden seats (constructed from pallets) with preserver. the job was done in next to no time and Colleen even made sure the grass was free of spills with some paper towel positioning. Following a bit of core while Kike and Dina cleaned the brushes (hurry up!) on the journey back we played our favourite game of secret surges, which included a cheeky road crossing surprise from Dina and Caroline trying to get us all run over. We then did various skipping and sprinting bits and bobs before passing one of the groups already on their way to the pub! Arrgh!

OTHER BITS

Biscuits were chocolate oaty things from Tesco. They were pretty good.

The big debate question was about the true start of the week. Sunday or Monday? Strava forces you to start on a Monday, Garmin defaults to Sunday (but gives you the option of changing to Sat, Sun or Mon). Some university timetables start on Sundays. Traditionally the working week starts on a Monday. Sunday is part of the weekend* surely? Well, we put it to the vote and poor old Sunday only got a couple with the vast majority loving Mondays. Del said Wednesday. Naughty. Of course, Monday must be the correct answer since your week doesn't truly start until you've GOODGYMMED

Post-tasks it was down the Famous Cock for a pint, a platter or a smoothie. Thanks to Kike for organising this. Word on the street is this will become a monthly event!

Loads of good done all over the borough this evening. See you next week (that's the start of the week, which is Monday). It's Bank Holiday, but we still have two tasks on the go. A choice of Barnsbury Square Gardens or Thornhill Square. Oooh.

Love, hugs and kisses xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Simon

Six Brent GoodGymers ran 8k to Sufra Community Food Bank and Kitchen to weed an area of community garden.

On a bright and airy bank holiday Monday we had a evening of GoodGym firsts! With Elle away on holiday I had the privilege of leading the fine Brent GoodGym crew for the First time, on day release from Team Hackney we set about navigating our way to the Stonebridge Estate. For the First time for any of us on a GoodGym run there were more males than females and it was also the first time I had broken the 8k barrier on a GoodGym run! Top running guys!! 🏃🏽🏃🏃🏻🏃🏿

Following the 4K run to Sufra Community Food Bank and Kitchen we got to work collecting the tooling from the quickly developing community garden and were super impressed with the progressed made. We gloved up and speedily removed all the weeds from a soon to be herb garden digging out and pulling out every weed in sight. In 30 solid minutes of work we dominated the task and cleared the flower bed of 2 full bin bags of weeds.

After a huge thanks from Dina from Sufra we headed back to base with improved pace and navigation making up time as we powered our way home.

A top evening of GoodGym action was rounded off with a series of static stretches before we headed off into the night with a job well done.

Thank you for looking after me and working so hard on the task!

Hope to see you at another Brent Group run soon or if you fancy coming out East Team Hackney would love to welcome you to H-Town on a Tuesday evening.

Elle will be back next week for some more fun on the fun.

Enjoy your week, and good luck to those racing the Hackney half! See you on the start line!!

Smooth Running

Joel