9 GoodGym Westminster runners ran 7k to Little Venice to pick up 8 buckets full of recycling along the canal to celebrate GoodGym’s 10th Birthday!! #GG10

A lovely evening in London Town for our Wednesday adventures as we glided down 3.5k on Little Venice with a couple of stops to fly the GG flag along the way.

Big shout out to Elena for her first GG run and a massive congratulations to Tom for reaching to Magical 50 GoodDeed milestone.

Arriving at the Canal and River Trust HQ where we grabbed our kit and headed out to rid the canal of as much recycling as possible for the evening! We limited the rubbish collection as the bins were way over flowing and really focused our efforts on recyclables as there was a handy line of recycling bins we could use.

Working our way West we found plenty of plastics, bottles and cans and even managed to do a on the grab sort of the recycling.

Great to be on the canal path as the sun set on a lovely September day doing our bit to help this beautiful stretch of water looking at its best!

35 minutes of grabbing, sorting and recycling away had us ready for the off. With the hands sanitised and kit put away we runoff as the darkness fell.

Getting back to base with a good workout complete and a top task in the bag we stretched out and head off into the night!

Thanks for coming along and hope to see you next week for our visit to St Andrews youth Club!!

Joel

25 GoodGymers ran 4km to help Ground works transform the Welshpool community garden!

Amazing to have an infusion of GoodGym first timers this week to really amp up our efforts in our community volunteering efforts!! Hope you all enjoyed your first taste of GG and will be back very soon for more!!

Three big Shout Outs for upcoming activities and get togethers. St Joesph’s Hospice jumble sale clear away on Saturday! Our September Social after our group run on the 17th!! Not forgetting next weeks visit to Abney Park for our Tuesday fix of GoodGym magic!!

It’s great when a plan comes together and we get to complete the task which looked improbable 50 minutes earlier and even better when we get a biscuit and sweet for our efforts to.

With Groundwork’s helping out the Welshpool community garden with plans, ideas, resources we were much needed to get the heavy lifting complete so that the garden would become more manageable for the residents.

Dominating 2.5 tonnes of soil by shovelling, carrying, barrowing and tipping into the brand new triangle raised beds filling them all to the brim!

We weeded away to create a perfect surface to lay 2 massive builders bags of bark down so that the weeds would stay at bay.

With that done the seeds were sewn to start the growing process in the beds which will bring colour and life to the garden!

Special shout out to first timer Ignatius for single handily transforming a large patch of grass into a new double flower bed and sewing the seeds of life!

A 2.5k run to the task 1.5k run back brought us back perfectly for 8:29!

Thanks for your monster effort and see you next week for our visit to Abney!!

Joel

12 amazing GoodGymers ran 7k to Little Venice to do a whole load of litter picking to keep the waterways are clear as possible with 18 buckets full of rubbish collected!

A beautiful evening in London Town greeted us for our Canal side adventures! A warm 3.5k run to the North West of the borough allowed us to get our sweat on and into a lovely running rhythm!

With our partnership with the Canals & River Trust we grabbed the plogging kit and headed off West to rid the Little Venice stretch of Canal of as many contaminates as possible.

Unfortunately the summer has brought about the worst in people’s ability to take their rubbish with them and we were picking up loads of rubbish. Buckets filling up fast so with a few bin runs we grabbed all we could in a very productive 45 minutes!!

With all the rubbish binned and hands sanitised we ramped up the pace for strong run back to base!!

Next week we are off to St Andrews youth Club to paint our way to victory!!

See you there

Joel

It is my pleasure to announce that 21 lovely Goodgymmers joined us for Simon Fitzmaurice's first outing as GoodGym Islington's new trainer, and ran to fix up an overgrown garden at the amazing Mildmay Community Centre. Great to see familiar faces, Goodgym tourists (Thanks Nurjehan!) and new participants (Becca, Caitlin and Gerry- welcome everyone) getting stuck in!

Shout outs to the Goodgymmers who helped out at the Crouch End Open Space over the weekend- the well-deserved picnic looked delicious. More information can be found here.

If anyone fancies a long social training run (not for setting PBs!) next weekend, Trainer Simon will be leading the Goodgym Monthly Long Run on Sunday, a route called "The Tour of the Docklands". 10km, 10 mile and 16 mile distances are available, starting from Greenwich and finishing in Stratford Olympic Park, passing loads of River Thames landmarks on the way. Sign up here if you want to get involved!

After a few warm-up exercises, and learning everyone's favourite biscuit preferences (I think Dark Chocolate Hobnob was the most popular...), our crew ran through Highbury Fields Park and past Newington Green to Mildmay Community Centre, and were greeted by Mus, the head gardener for this evening's task. Armed with secateurs and trowels, the team uprooted weeds and snipped back thistles and thorns from the main garden area at the site, whilst concentrating on staying upright on a steep slope! Lots of really impressive teamwork on display, and we ended up with loads of bags full of green waste by the end of our session.

The Mildmay Community Centre is a fascinating building- the whole place is fully sustainable and eco-friendly, boasting a roof full of solar panels for everyday energy usage, green gardening spaces and rain water receptacles to store water for the plants. Some really exciting projects are coming up, so we will be sure to return soon.

Just a reminder- next weeks task to Caledonian Park will start at a different location due to the Bank Holiday. Our start location will be:

The Arc Centre 98b St Paul Street London N1 7DF

(Nearest tube stations are: Highbury & Islington or Angel)

Have a fantastic week! Happy Running! See you soon!

57 GoodGymers ran 6km to help Kentish Town City Farm, broke the Camden Attendance Record and I said farewell to you wonderful people!

On my first Wednesday living in London back in May 2014 I enjoyed GoodGym Camden, I found a welcoming community of runners who were like minded people. I was honoured to become your trainer in January 2016, something that's always been more than a job to me. It's a passion; to bring people together, learn about our bodies, help the communities we live/work in and then go to the pub afterwards. You guys are the best!

Thank you so much for last night, the amazing group of you that came in the rain to say goodbye (and hug the goats) and for such wonderful presents.

Okay back to the normal report... welcome along to the newbies Lisa and Xanthy - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. A huge well done to GG sisters Kat Kelly and Liz Pang for hitting 100 good deeds, I am privileged to call them my friends and proud of what they've achieved at GoodGym Camden over the last 3+ years.
2. Go along to CREOS Community Mission in Islington this Sunday - it's a great one that ends with a free picnic!
3. So I have two races planned that I'd love for you to be apart of - Rother Valley Running Festival (near Sheffield) on 16th November. Also we'll be going to Kiev in May 2020 for the next #GGxEuro Trip! More details about both coming soon.

Corrr blimey there was so many of you! Such a big group, in fact such a big group that we broke the Camden Group Run Attendance Record and were just a few people short of breaking the GG World Record. Next time.

For the run up there we formed two groups of 25-30 people, with brilliant Run Leaders and Taskforce Peeps leading, middlemarking (cheers Steve) and backmarking each one - thanks to Abi, Kat, Chris, Aidan, Patrick, Steve C, Frances, Rosie and James for all there help leading groups through the wet streets of Camden. Meanwhile Mr Lee and I formed good-cycle again and helped direct at various points along the 3k route.

Ciao now Bown cow

Upon our arrival at Kentish Town City Farm Mel told us the brilliant news about the mean old trustee board had been removed, new guys had come in place and £100,000 being donated by a very kind donor. The farm has been saved, a hollywood ending! Then she set us to work with four tasks:

• Three people collected up debris in the goat area
• Twenty-Five people removed old decking from around the pond, and then chain ganged it all the way down to the bin at the bottom of the farm.
• Fifteen people shovelled muck, bagging it up and re-piled it
• Finally thirteen people racked and evened out the ground up at the Arena

The farm was full of activity for 30 minutes, we got so much done and Mel was really pleased! Thanks for working so hard in the rain, muck and more. Next it was GOAT TIME - we hugged them, said hey to little Rosie and fed them - all the fun! After a special group photo we headed back to base for stretches and then onto to pizza + beer! Thanks for Kat, Rosie etc for organising that!

Bown-ding into the future

What a special evening to end a special time for me personally at GoodGym ( both Camden and Islington). As I said last night I started without a beard and not really knowing what was up, the community that is GoodGym has enabled me to grow into who I am today. Thank you so much for the fantastic presents, the messages, the individual farewells and for just being you. You guys are my family, I love you and I'm going to miss you so much!

See you at a GoodGym Event sometime soon!

PB over and out for the final time.