Hooray for balmy February evenings when you have an outdoor task! No snow! No sleet! No cold rain from the sky! All of these meant a fortuitous evening ahead, surely?

Well. Sort of. We headed to the lovely Myatt's Fields park in two groups - one heading the 2km straight there and the other taking in a 4km route with sights including: Stockwell AND Oval underground stations, plus the busy junction bit at the end of Brixton Road. Don't say I don't spoil you Lambeth.

I really love that busy junction bit at the end of Brixton Road! Said Steve on his 4km sightseeing run

On arrival at Myatt's Fields we found the lights were not on and noone was at home. Oh dear! A mix up meant that they were not prepared for our arrival. However, they were soon to be on their way, so we took advantage of the lovely low wall to do some squats and ankle conditioning whilst we waited. When we got let into the park, there was a muddy area leading to the nature garden that needed some matting putting down and then lots of gravel covering it.

A crack team of very neat MATTERS started laying down the undercoat, whilst everyone else went on a headtorch run around the park, then did some lovely jump squat high fives and some squat knee jousting. Once ready, we used our hands as human shovels to start spreading the pebbles all over the matting. It was something of a religious experience I would say, where people could perhaps make a wish or take a moment to think about what they wanted to let go of before having a good old scatter.

This is the most ceremonial gravel spreading you have ever seen! Said Katie

I am not sure everyone agreed with this perspective but hey ho I'm the boss, though to be honest not for much longer folks, so either way you're in luck!

As the clock started counting down to the end of the session we grabbed some shovels and plastic boxes to get more gravel spread out. Most of us headed back and a small group of committed individuals left no stone unturned until there was an excellent spread across the whole area.

The task owner could not believe her eyes and we could all head home proud of a wacky job well done. Pure GoodGym!

18 GoodGym-ers ran 9km to set up Santa's grotto

This was the last GG Barnet run of 2016! It was also the 18th run ever! (Sorry, I told you it was the 17th... my bad!)

This was also the most amount of runners we've had on a run excluding the launch run – tying with our run to Newstead to paint the walls. It was nice to see so many of you – particularly the return of Aimee from the Phoenix, who arranged for some incredible mulled wine, mince pies and popcorn for us for after the run. She definitely deserves a cheer for that!

Also a massive welcome to GoodGym tourists Sarah and Frances who joined the Barnet crew this week.

This week we split into two groups, with Damian leading the speedy group with the help of Sarah as back-marker; and Heather leading the less speedy group with Hazel's help back-marking.

Sarah and Jody ended up taking a little detour after a quick costume change at the trafic lights. Luckily they had a map and were together!

When we reached Community Focus, we were greeted by Danusia and the team – and Buddy the dog. 30 very speedy minutes and a tonne of GoodGym magic later and a plain white room was turned into a grotto Santa will be proud of!

The team did a great job decorating the grotto, whilst having a little dance to some Christmas tunes.

We split into two groups again for the run back and celebrated the end of 2016 with a festive Barnet Biscuit: mince pies. Plus some mulled wine and popcorn – all courtesy of the Phoenix. So wonderful I thought it worth repeating =p

We also had some Lindt chocolate balls courtesy of Jody – which is probably my fave chocolate of all time.

We'll be back on 3 January 2017 with a run to Dell Fields care home to do some painting. Sign up here

Have a wonderful Christmas ( / winter holiday season) and I'll see you all soon! Lots of exciting things waiting for us in 2017. Well done for all your hard work so far.

Pennie

20 energised GoodGymers ran 6k to One Housing to start the creation of their WellBeing Garden.

A huge congratulations to Clare, Dan and Mireille for there recent half marathon performances!

With it being Mental Health awareness week we were Running and Talking even more than usual on the 3k back street route past my old primary schools to One Housing. One Housing are an organisation that provides modern and high quality Housing for people with mental illness as well as provide support for the service users to enhance their quality of life.

We arrived and found that maybe let's say the right kinds of tools were not ready for us but we had energy and enthusiasm to hand! So armed with a ** Hammer, Golf club** we set about clearing as much of the over grown vegetation so that we would have space to do all the Landscape Art next week! ** Holly** our ** Head of Artistic Development** took charge of colour design and arrangement and is really looking forward to next week's pattern creation session!

Nine filled bin bags of weeds and out of control Ivey later we had smashed the task! Next week armed with the list I left we will have all the equipment to transform the Wellbeing Garden into a magical space!

On the 3.1k (upon Rich's request) run back to base we took a sneak peak into a building that we will hopefully become very familiar with in the coming months!! It looks like an epic project in size and intrigue! Look forward to getting stuck into that task in a couple of weeks!

A strong run back with a bit of a sprint finish rounded off by a few revitalising stretches saw finished off a top evening!!

We talked about dominating a 10k race in November! Here is the link to the Regents Park 10k for info and how to enter (slightly cheaper to enter on Bookit Zone). I will be running (assuming I have found my legs by then), be great to have a group getting out there and running well!! Will set up a Race on the GoodGym site next week.

Next week we will be back at the Wellbeing Garden and would love to have you along! Please sign up here as an added sweetener we will be going out after the run on mass to a food establishment where we will be able to replenish our fuel store post run! The monthly social is always fun and a great with great chat, would love as many people to come along as possible!!

Have a great active week!

Strong Smooth Tempo

Joel