12 fabulous Hammersmith & Fulhamites ran 4km & gardened for Maystar Estates

Welcome to newbies this week - Ele, Georgia, Amber and Anders - lovely to have you along and join the GG crew!

In the news this week:

1. It's GG Monthly Drinks this Thursday - we've got a pub booked in this pub - link.
2. The GG Olympics has been announced for Saturday 30th June at Parliament Hill Track - represent H&F at an array of events.

After a quick intro and a dynamic warm up we headed into the night, bouncing off the main road and into the backstreets. We met Pauline from Maystar Estates - she explained that they now have to look after their gardens and deliver activities alone because of council cuts.

We were eager to get started, armed with tools we did the following:

• Cut back a bush - bagging up all the debris
• Weeding and cutting the grass back (by hand) in one garden
• Hanging up a new clock!
• Weeding, trimming back and cutting back a small tree in another garden.
• Pulling up and cutting back dead roots and ivy

With 25 minutes of hard work we'd made a huge impact; something many of the communities residents would not have been able to do alone. If you think about it we achieved nearly 6 hours of work between us in one Spring evening!

File Fun!

After doing squats, star jumps and squat jumps to warm up again we headed west to the river for our extended run home. Once on the towpath we played the Indian File game - with one person sprinting at all times - everyone did amazingly!

Upon arriving home we stretched out and chatted about the GG Olympics!

Sign up next week here, Polly will be back!

PB out.

We returned to the place it all began this week, running the 2km to Long Lane Pasture to shovel some compost. We were actually shifting the piles of compost that we created last summer, when we piled up all that cut grass and hay. I did not realise how long it takes for compost to become compost!

We started with a quick intro at the cinema where we all met Luke – give him a cheer for his very first run with us!

With many GG Barnet runners still in Riga, it was great to see we still had such a wonderful turnout for the task at hand. We started off with a gentle jog down to Cherry Tree Wood to warm up on the grass before Heather lead the team towards Long Lane Pasture. Amanda missed Hazel and her portable speaker, telling me running without the GG Barnet playlist just wasn't the same! You can add tracks to the GG Barnet Tunes playlist here.

We arrived at Long Lane Pasture in about 20 minutes – our longest run in weeks! The Pasture team greeted us and showed us our task. Nicola did a wonderful job raking the pathways of catepillars (not real catepillars), which fall from the trees and kill the grass. Luke and Lilian both took a few scratches from the brambles and I was very impressed (and also a little worried) with Amanda's commitment to getting a good team photo at the end. We do have the best photos in Barnet.

We finished up with a running game around a big ring path, before heading back to base.

This week's Barnet Biscuit was homemade cloud cookies and ginger & cinnamon biscuits courtesy of Joanna

I don't know if 'cloud cookie' is the actual name, but Louis and I both agreed that's what it was like eating.

Join us next week for our VERY LAST EVER run to Hammerson Nightingale care home on the Bishops Ave. We will be packing up the library. The home is being knocked down, so this will be our goodbye GoodGym good deed. It's 1km each way.

These are the missions I mentioned today:

Saturday

Allotments in Harringey

Night of 1000 PBs NW5

Sunday

Animal Home NW10

Creos N10

Clear Ms P's Patio N4

Barnet’s do-gooding, get-fitting biscuiteers were in fine fettle last night after smashing a brilliant task in record time.

After a slightly delayed start (sorry team!), we said congratulations to those that had done Park Runs that week, and to our Barnet heroes. Well done to Hazel, Damian, and Madeleine for topping the distance, good deeds and cheers league tables. Give ‘em a high five, Barnet!

Before we set off for the run, we did a headcount, and discussed one of the capital’s most pressing issues. Apparently there are some definitive rankings of Londoners’ favourite tube lines. According to the statisticians, the most popular line is the DLR, followed by Jubilee, then Victoria. But Barnet disagrees, and had some good reasons to back up their faves. The winning tube line, by a long way was….drum roll please…the oldest of the deep-level lines, the incomparable Northern line! Of course it was. Reasons included, ‘because I’m Northern’, and ‘because we can see it from here’. Fair enough.

With that decided, we set off for Northway Gardens. It was a lovely run there, covering part of the Bishop’s Avenue and having a good snoop at the giant (empty) houses as we went. Damian knew the route like the back of his hand, and after no time at all, we arrived to see Brian the gardener waving at us from his car. Which, when we got closer, we could see was filled to the brim with bags of compost (and a couple of bits of wood). The GoodGym fates were smiling upon us last night, because would you believe there were exactly as many bags as there were runners? Crazy stuff. Taking one bag each (and a wheelbarrow), we emptied the car and set off for the gardens a few minutes away. Compost unloaded, there were a few other jobs to do, such as de-bulbing daffodils, emptying compost bins, filling pens with leaves and shifting pots. All of which was done quickly, much to Brian’s approval – and we even got a few gardening tips and a bit of history on the garden itself, which is run entirely by volunteers and is beautiful.

We took advantage of the lovely surroundings to do our fitness session next to the garden. After a quick core blast and sprint session, we finished off with a game of British Bulldog. Apparently this was banned in some schools, but in Barnet we laugh in the face of rules, and launched into a very speedy game that saw some super-fast sprinting and tricksy footwork. On the run back, we took advantage of the red lights to have a squat challenge, seeing who could hold it the longest. The team obviously has glutes of steel, and outlasted the traffic lights, before finishing off the run with some stretches. Baking Queen Hazel treated the group with some delicious cookies and brownies wrapped in their very own little sweetshop bags – so cute! Next week trainer Pennie is back to lead you through the streets of Barnet to do even more good for the community. Be there or be square:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/gg-barnet-helps-archer-academy-create-a-cool-space

If group runs were meals - stay with me here - then last night's in Barnet would have been a picnic. We had a lovely summer evening, we had the famous Barnet biscuit, and we had a task sandwich...

It all began at the beautiful Pheonix Cinema where we said hello to some ace new faces. Give a cheer to Tim, Laura, and Bethany, runners of Barnet! While you're there, why don't you also give a virtual pat on the back to Heather who, perhaps unsurprisingly, is topping the distance leader boards after running the Paris marathon last weekend. What a star! Hat tip to Hazel who is leading the cheers and the good deeds - way to go Hazel.

With Penny away on her hols, we did a head count and at the same time named our favourite biscuit in honour of the erstwhile biscuity trainer - chocolate definitely came out at the top of the rankings. Our task was only a very short run away, so off we set, looking forward to getting stuck in with the lovely Paul and Kim back marking for us. Ah, such hope, such optimism. It was only when we arrived at the Archer Academy ready to start digging a lovely big pond, did we find the building was locked. Tumbleweed skittered across the tarmac. It didn't look good. A quick call confirmed that the Easter hols meant that the school was closed. What were we to do? Luckily Barnet has a crack team of a task force, and after a moment of Damian and Hazel putting their heads together we came up with a plan. Paul still had some leaflets at home from a charity GoodGym had worked for previously - a brilliant sounding organisation called Barnet Furniture Centre that helps low-income families by providing them with affordable furniture. Phew!

We didn't want to waste the lovely quiet spot we found ourselves in and decided to do our fitness session first. It was circuits night, with five stations featuring burpees, sprints, squat holds, planks and press ups. 45 seconds of work, and 15 seconds rest between each circuit was a tough work out but Barnet meant business. There were some high energy burpees, some lovely straight-backed planks, and, well, there was some lying facedown on the tarmac too, but that was proof of a good work out. After a couple of games (Fish! Chips! Chicken??) we set off to deliver those flyers, dividing up into teams to get the job done quick smart. Which we did - in record time. Which meant that we had time for the last part of our fitness sandwich. Off we jogged with Damien leading us to a newly-mowed patch of lawn to bust out some core exercises. They were toughies, and ten minutes later our abs were well and truly worked. With that our fitness/task/fitness sandwich was done, and we had an easy run back to our start location. While we were stretching Paul and Kim told us about the chicken connoisseur - he searches for the pengest munch in London. We had some pretty peng munches with the dark chocolate post-run Barnet biscuits - thank you so much. You guys are some peng runners, Barnet! Thanks for a great night. Next week you'll be helping to spread the word about your lovely start location, you can sign up here:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-out-the-phoenix

ps did you enjoy running along the streets of East Finchley with a soundtrack of your favourite tunes? I bet you did. Barnet cleverly has a spotify list YOU can add to. Just whack your choices on the list and Hazel will upload them to make a playlist for your next run:

https://open.spotify.com/user/hayzec/playlist/103nlP4rUGeecGerbkW51y