20 Ninja Gardeners gathered on a not to cold evening in wonderful Hackney to help show what can be done when Good(Gym) conquers evil (well Christmas food 🍫🍰🍩 and alcohol consumption🍾🍺🍷).

An injection of new Hackney GoodGym blood was mixed in with some returning friends and some die hard regulars so get 2016 started in spectacular fashion. A brilliant and informative guide to Coach runs and Missions from Hackney Coach rep Kev who is working his way very nicely towards the magical century club of Good Deeds. We got the scores on the doors of the January Challenge, where we lie 6th a 10,000k and 150 Good deed target in the challenge but think GoodGym Hackney is looking strong💪🏽💪🏻 and fast 🏃🏾🏃🏿 So let's smash through the 1000k 100 good deed barrier by the end of the month!! Make sure you log all your training runs and coach runs!! If you need any help with this just drop me an email (Joel@GoodGym.org). The Victoria Park 10k is approaching on the 24th of January if you would like to start the year off with a traffic free, flat road race sign up here. If you would like any training advice come and have a chat to me next week.

We set off skipping down Mare street after a mobilising dynamic warm up getting our walking lung and side to side squat on, looking a bit like we were playing the old computer game space invaders with the passing commuters. We were talking about this weeks Triple T (Tuesday Talking Topic) strangest food we had eaten in December. Keeping together and getting aquatinted we kept a steady pace as we took in the various sights and sounds of our tour of Hackney on our way to the marvellous Wilton Estate community garden. Where we meet Lisa would took us through all the areas needing to be weeded and cleared so that more local residents have space to join the community garden. As quick as a flash we were off! Gloves on, head torches turned up 🔦🔦 we split into 3 groups of Ninja gardeners and got to it. The first group made light work of a weed dense flower bed and were soon filling up the bins at a great rate.
Group 2 were hard at work battling with big tree and bush roots calling to tool reinforcements to really work hard to get the unwanted roots out! Group 3 were having a bit of a party in the original community garden, head torches flashing and DJ Pat rocking the old school 90's tunes on his water proof speakers showing all the new comers how at 113 Good deed vet gets it done while having fun.

As quick as that in just 35 minutes of lung pumping root pulling work the fearless Hackney GoodGym team had cleared 3 flower beds filled 2 huge bins and only left 1 pesky root! Great work team 👏🏽👏🏻👏🏾

We cleared the tools back to shed and Lisa thanked us for our super speedy work and we headed on our way. We tested the Wilton 500 meter track to make sure it would be ready for our next time trial when I noticed a few runners chomping at the bit to go a bit faster and longer on the way back so we split up with Kev leading the long range tribe on a speedy 4K loop back to base past Hackney Downs with a super sprint finish from first timer Amy breaking the finish line first 🏁🏁. The sexy crew knew they wanted to have so speedy fun but in the more refined 2k glide back to base. We set the streets alight with some land mark Fartlek bursts and we took to the back streets to get one last interval in before a calm and relaxing warm down at base before we said our goodbyes and disappeared off into the night having done Good had Fun and started 2016 in a great way!

Hope to see you all again next week, same time same place where we will be off to St Luke's to do some more great work and get fit! Sign up here.

Keep it Ninja

Joel

With an amazing turn out of 65 runners we fully deserve two run reports this time;

Wow - 65 lycra clad, many red shirted, gathered at Somerset House to run to Victoria to donate a coat for #givingtuesday. So far so goodgym. I want to say how much fun this was. Tom Craggs was on top form, very nearly a Sargent major, but staying on the right side of the line but it was like herding cats at times. Another awesome warm up.

Many old faces, many new. I met Emma, a student at Imperial College and Polly, both first timers. I think they both enjoyed it and will hopefully return for a group run. Running en mass through central London at night is such a buzz. Chatting as you go, avoiding pedestrians in Victoria, sprinting down Birdcage Walk and trotting over Horseguards - virtually no greater fun can be had for free in London, of that I'm sure. A group of us then retired to the Lyceum Arms for a post run beer and non running related chat. Wonderful.

Steve.

Last night, 65 GoodGym runners amassed at the iconic Somerset House armed with nothing but good cheer, spare jackets and a letter signed by PC Mark explaining why over 50 of us were running through rush hour London.

This was no ordinary GoodGym run (if there is such a thing!), this was #GivingTuesday and we were on a mission to give spare jackets and coats to Wrap up London appeal at The Passage in Victoria.

GoodGym news included Patrick receiving his 100 runs t-shirt, which is pretty epic in its own right and even more so on such a unique run. After warming up on the terrace of Somerset House with a few moves and more than few bemused spectators, we set off.

The 3k to our destination was far from dull. Taking in some of London’s most iconic sites including Big Ben, The London Eye and Westminster Abbey, we also headed straight into the centre of a large anti-war protest group at Parliament Square!

No harm done the pace in the group was steady and welcoming, with conversations and friendships springing up across the group.

Once at The Passage, Tom kept us on our toes literally with a few squats and lunges before we entered to donate our coats. The Passage runs London’s largest voluntary sector resource centre for homeless and vulnerable people: helping up to 200 men and women each day. The non-profit organisation makes contact with rough sleepers and reaches out to find out what it is they need and how The Passage can best help. Despite it being a fairly mild December, good quality jackets and coats are always required so as we handed over 70+ jackets, we knew they’d be appreciated.

Sadly we weren’t able to squeeze in a time session, which provoked mixed reactions from the group! We altered our route to not intersect with any protests (but did run by an anti-fracking campaign!) and returned to Somerset House via St James Park.

The run concluded with everyone intact and no AWOLs reported. Congrats to the GoodGym team including Tom, Axel, Ed, Ken, Will and the others for organising and shepherding GoodGyms biggest every group across central London and thanks to you all for joining! It was definitely the best use of both my old coat and my Tuesday evening!

Terri.

Last night around 40 goodgymers said “no deal” to the cold and dark conditions and made their way to Papa’s park for another Goodgym Lambeth session. The elements didn’t put folks off as we had loads of new faces all wanting to get involved, cracking stuff. Before we set off we gave James a big round of applause for completing over 100 good deeds, James is one of the original members of GoodGym Lambeth and is an all-round top guy and between visiting his Coach Keith and pounding the streets of Lambeth he has amassed many a mile and more importantly contributed loads to local projects and tasks have we done in Lambeth, well played sir, well played.

After the introductions we all ran around 2 km to Myatts field to meet Guy from Streetscape. Streetscape is a great local project that gets young people into employment through learning horticulture skills, as they are busy learning new skills their yard often gets cluttered with bits of woods from jobs they have done and that is where we came in tonight.

As some of us arrived slightly early we did a lap of the park only to be welcomed by the rest of the group forming a human tunnel to welcome us in (I bloody loved that by the way!!). Then split into two groups one with Rebecca and one on the task. The task was simply to get all the off cuts of wood in the yard and load it into the truck. Now a big shout out goes to John Hunter who did his best impression of a lamppost by shining a light on us throughout the task and was vital so we could see what we were picking up and helped loading it in the van. At first the pile of wood looks pretty daunting however in true goodgym style we packed it to the rafters and managed to get it all in there. We even had some time spare to load some bits of fence and even a bench, which was expertly shoved in by Guy at the end.

Half way through the groups swapped and the non-task group were faced with Rebecca’s circuits. Now I don’t know about you but my legs have certainly been feeling it today. This was because we were put through our paces by doing 25 squats and burpees followed by 20 lunges on each side, we did three sets of these reducing each by 5 each time and at the end to mix it up we did another lap of the park. In a word ouch (but a good ouch none the less.

Safe to say by the time we made it back I was spent however Sarah’s homemade millionaire shortbread that welcomed us back was a definite great way to end another cracking Tuesday night.

Tom