After an evening of shovelling manure on the Hackney group run, the gang were unsure what kind of reception we would receive when we turned up at the restaurant unannounced and ponging.

But we needn't have worried, as there's always get a warm reception at Tad - a Hackney favourite for socials, due to the enormous portions of delicious Turkish food. As the huge piles of flatbreads and dips, salad platters, mezze, moussaka and shish arrived, we soon forgot about the whiff of our trainers and tucked in.

Tonight the group was celebrating Mireille's 50th good deed, as well as some recent great performances at the Big Half so it was cheers all round!

24 speedy GoodGymers ran 3k to Gascoyne Estate community garden and shovelled a cubic tonne of soil!!

Some new faces to Hackney this week, giving our GoodGym and Hackney first timers a warm welcome! Our returning Big Half Heroes we’re out in force after their magnificent efforts of Sunday morning, legs a bit tired but huge smiles from a massive achievement!!

With a little condensed time time to play with as the Bakehouse was closing up slightly early so we set off at pace to Gascoyne Estate, 10 minutes and we were in! Meeting up with Derek from the garden we set to work trying to make a dent in the monstrous pile of soil that the council had given them on Friday.

Thanks to Peter for bringing along extra wheelbarrows and shovels to allow us all to be as productive as possible!

Our help allowed the community garden to accept the 3 tonne soil delivery from the Council which allows not only community gardens to prosper but also residential Gardens to thrive with a little extra growing magic soil. Without the soil being moved away from pavements and parking bays it would be impossible for the soil donation to be accepted. Paying for the amount of soil to keep a community garden blooming is not viable.

We got stuck right in ferrying the soil to all corners of the community garden, using wheelbarrows, bins, big pots and anything else we could lay our hands on! Speedy shovelling and precision tipping made light work of this heavy duty task!

Making use of every available second we managed to squeeze in 55 minutes of soil shifting action before we took advantage of the local hospitality comprising of fruit and water then zipping back to base to grab our bags before they were locked in!

Great to see a big contingent head off for the monthly social to celebrate our Half marathon success as well as Mireille’s 50th Good Deed!!

Next week we will be heading off to Abney Park look forward to seeing you then!!

Smooth Running

Joel

Big shout out to GG First timer Ali for the epic pun!!

10 battle hardened GoodGymers braved the elements to create 80 metres of mulch path in Clissold Park!

We negative 3 and with a wind chill of -5 those who didn’t know how amazing GoodGymers are may have thought that no one will show up but 10 well wrapped up runners came to party!!

Avoiding the setting icy paths and sticking to the main roads to minimise our icy encounters we motored our way the 4k to Clissold Park to meet Park Manager Quentin. Luckily a fair amount of tools had been left out for us to get cracking straight on without the trek to the lock up. Hitting a nice early rhythm we had a two pronged attack going on attacking from the North and South to create path making glory! Actually we were much faster in the arctic cold than the pouring rain on our last visit. Once we cracked the frosty surface of the mulch there was no stopping us go!!

Working at a warmth inducing pace we managed to complete the rest of the long straight we have been working on for 3 visits!!

With the path looking great we headed back to base navigating the 4k run back. Big thanks to Dominique for helping to carry all the kit back to the lock up!! Gave everyone else a more manageable run back!

Next week we will be taking a visit to Gascoyne Estate to help the community garden with a fresh delivery of soil!

Best of luck to everyone in the Big Half on Sunday!! We are all 100% behind you and a load of us will be there cheering you on!! If you want to maximise your cheers I would recommend wearing your GoodGym tops to run in!!

Have a great week

Smooth Running

Joel

p.s Thanks Peter for the extra pictures.

21 fantastic GoodGymers ran 7k to Wilton Estate Community Garden to bag 3 tonnes of stones ready to be transported on Saturday.

Beginning the evening by welcoming GoodGym first timers MJ and Jennie and bigging up The Shindig! (Remember to register your interest if you fancy coming along, no matter how long you have been GoodGyming).

Heading out on the scenic 3k route to Wilton Estate, keeping it 100% social along the way! A nice distance at a nice pace got us warm and pumping the distance up for our Spring fitness goals.

Meeting Ulus from the Wilton Estate he assured us it was a tinny task that would only need 5 or 6 people. How wrong he was!! Seeing the 3 huge tonne bags of stones we got bagging!! Shovelling the stones from the big bags into the smaller bags so that they can be transported on Saturday to a different garden. The stones are redundant after our heroic mulch shifting efforts in January!!

Getting into a strong rhythm of shovelling, bagging, carrying and wheelbarrowing the stones 100 metres to the garden store cupboard. With 35 minutes of heavy lifting and shifting we had cleared 3 Tonnes of stones in 50 bags. All ready to go to there new home on Saturday!!

With a thirst for miles with so many of the squad heading towards Spring Half Marathons we split into 2 groups for the dash back to base! The first group dropping some serious pace on a 4k loop managed to catch up with the 2nd group on our 3k route back to the Bakehouse.

Great to get some nice distance in the legs at whatever pace felt good! Look forward to seeing all our has training pay off in the coming weeks!!

Mireille has got the ball rolling getting our monthly social back rolling in 2018!! So next week after the Group run we will be heading out for chat, drink, eat, be great if you joined us!!

Thanks for coming along, see you next week!

Smooth Running

Joel

17 brave Hackney GoodGymers ran 10k touching nearly every corner of the borough.

The cold was no match to a strong band of GoodGymers this evening unfortunately it was too much for Hackney Park Rangers!!

After a strong running start to the session where we powered out 4k to Clissold Park ready for action to continue to create the new running path around the perimeter of the park. We waited for our park Ranger, but ever a few shouts into the darkness didn’t work so we had to roll with plan B!

Splitting up into two groups we had the first pod run the way we came 4k back to base while the rest of the squad headed out to explore Hackney near and far on a 6k loop! The 6k loop felt a little like the running bus as we dropped runners off Home at various points on the run. Even time to drop into Core CIC to see the building we helped renovate look so good!

Rounding it out past the town Hall to click over the 10k and giving GoodGymer Joel his running distance PB!!

Sorry about the change of plan tonight but sometimes things happen!

Next week we are off to Abney Park, so sign up and come along!!

Smooth Running

Joel

19 GoodGymers ran 7k to Hackney Wick Community Garden to get 45 minutes of tough digging, lifting, shifting and piling graft in.

On the penultimate evening of the January Challenge Team Hackney May just have got over the line in completing our distance challenge but are agonisingly close to hitting our GoodDeed target!! Anyone up for a bit of GG tourism tomorrow? Or Sneaking in a Mission??

So we have the added delight of not only a magical Hackney Group Run but Anna was zipping around photographing us while in glorious GoodGym action!!

Setting off at a steady pace heading down to the River Lea lead by Peter, dropping our best Blue Steal whenever Anna popped up to snap us.

Making good time we soon covered just over 3k to meet up with Kirsty for the first time in 2018. Splitting up into groups we had the diggers who certainly worked up a sweat tonight scooping up the heavy saturated soil first to create space then to make a new flower bed. The next crew were over in the second garden gathering up wood by the barrow and wheelie bin load then running it back over to the Riverside garden. Once the garden was cleared of all the wood we started to turn over the soil to get the leaves we put in to the beds compost in November a chance to work their magic and fertilise the ground.

The final group were bagging and leaves, making a net and creating the biggest log pile Hackney has seen!!

45 minutes of all our action was richly rewarded by orange segments and the amazing biscuits!! With our energy levels restored we powered back to base picking up the intensity as we ran!! Putting strong effort in to the round about then dropping the running hammer on some speedy lamppost sprints!!

A general finish to the almost 4k route back rounded off a fun evening!!

Have a great week and see you next time when we go to Clissold Park to continue our work making the running path around the park perimeter.

Smooth Running

Joel

**> 17 GoodGymers helped fell a tree for the Tree Musketeers plus a Parkrun and running warm down.

A bright and early start for the crew as we invaded Hackney Marshes Parkrun to feed our legs some Saturday morning speed!!

Everyone battled around the riverside 5k route putting the Foot to the floor and representing GoodGym brilliantly.

After we were timed across the line by Peter and Eva on Parkrun volunteering duties we took a calm warm down jog to the river to flush out the lactic build up or get us moving for those that had just joined.

A few body weight conditioning exercises got our muscles primed for the task ahead!!

Meeting Russell from the Tree Musketeers who explained the 80ft challenge ahead. The Tree has done its job increasing the fertility of the soil so that the fruit trees around would prosper but was now sealing valuable Sunlight from the adolescent trees. So we went over to the orchard to get sawing.

With are climbing expert Ros quickly up a tree we tied back the branches of fruit trees so that there would be no collateral damage!

We then got some high sawing with the grim reaper saw which cut down the branches high up to reduce the possible damage the tree would cause as it fell.

With everything ready to roll we got back into safe positions and watched Russell go to work! Making two precise cuts then hammering a wedge in to see a perfect felling!!

We finished off the session by cutting the tree up and making a huge log pile!!

Great job by everyone and awesome to see the first timers getting stuck in!! Hope to see Joel, Molly and Pippa at a few more group runs very soon!!

Smooth Running

Joel

We saw tree fell