RUN REPORT BY THE ONE AND ONLY LAURA SHARPLES x x x x

Tonight the Brent Goodgymmers were showing that it is indeed 'Girls, Girls' who run the world...! As Ellie, Laura, Claire, Lizzie and Clare were the fab five that made up tonight's Brent Crew.

Tonight was track night! But before we could get down to business, we had work to do and off to St Andrew's Church we went.... Heavens Above! Our task was to clear up all the rubbish from the front of the church ready for the community gardening day on Sunday.

As we rushed at high speed through the busy streets of Willesden we arrived to a photo finish from our good friend Yay-braham!

Gloves on and pickers in the mix, we set to work and powered through the flower beds in 30 minutes. It's safe to say Abraham was in seventh heaven with our pile of bulging bin bags, hallelujah!

With songs of praise ringing in our ears, we tore off in the direction of Willesden sports centre, ready for track.

After a bit of limbering up we were ready for action. Team work was the name of the game tonight and we worked as a well oiled machine to ramp up the pace and run 3 increasingly fast 400 meter laps.

As gravity pulled us back to The Queensberry, it was time for a bit more female bonding and we really showed how nuts we are about goodgym by chomping down on cashews with a side helping of female empowerment.

And with that concluded another great week from the goodgym Brent crew.

Cash-who (cashew- geddit) will join us next week...?

A massive thirty three of us gathered for a brand new task this week: a trip to Sunnyside Community garden up in Archway. Sunnyside is a community-led garden that is open to all, but specialises in therapeutic horticulture for people with physical and mental disabilities.

As well as ten newcomers Samah, John, Dami, Mariam, Chris, Toby, Fedja, David, Jade and Emma we had tourists Kevin from Hackney (soon to be Bristol) and John and Jackie from Camden and a few journalists included in the mix as well!

After a round of applause for Graham for completing 50 good deeds and another for Patrick for completing 150, we travelled up in three separate groups. Simon and Graham led the speedsters, with Patrick and Aidan taking a medium-paced group and John and Ama looking after the philosophers.

Up at the centre we were greeted by Yvonne and Alan, who were delighted to see so many keen faces and tooled us up ready for the evening's work.

We got stuck in for a good half hour. One group tackled shrubbery around the side of the centre with choppers, loppers, secateurs, scissors and all manner of cutting tools with a couple of the team being led back and forth with wheelbarrows by the enthusiastic Alan.

Round the corner muscle-bound volunteers were ripping rotten logs out the ground with their bare hands (and a mattock) while a third group tackled some very stubborn roots.

All this while Mariam & Dami and Chris carried out their interviews. We’ll post links when the video and article are out. Looks like they got some great material from us all.

The really amazing thing was we managed all this without stopping for a biscuit. This is unheard of in Islington (Simon is obviously a bit rusty after being away for a while and had left them back at the pool). Oh well, a good reason to run back quickly.

And it was FOUR groups for the run back. The original fast, medium and philosophers, plus a special “press” group led by Graham after we realised that having people carry back lots of recording equipment with the fast group might be a bit of a struggle.

The fast group worked extra hard with secret surges, the “lunge, skip, run” game (what could that involve?), stair running, hill running and a little obstacle running. Chris was desperate for some core work to offset the aerobic insaneness. Next week, Chris (and everybody will now know who to moan at when our abs are shot to shreds).

Back at the pool just a little bit later than planned we multi-tasked by holding stretches while receiving biscuits: a true test of balance, agility, coordination and greed.

Finally a vote on the evening’s hot topic of debate. Mice: vermin or cute adorable little critters. Definitely a few votes for vermin and a few stories of cats bringing them in in various states of mutilation, but the majority thought they were delightful creatures and just wanted to give them a mouse-sized cuddle. Next week: Are cats complete psychopaths?

A great first task at Sunnyside. We’re heading back there in a few weeks, but in the meantime we have another brand new task next week. We’re visiting West London Mission for some more gardening joy.

Great to be back. See you next week,

Simon

P.S. Should have a few more photos later on.

On a clear crisp Islington evening 27 wrapped up GoodGymers ran 6.75k to Claxton House to rip up and breakdown playground flooring, weed flower beds, raise some flower beds with compost and cut back the hedges.

So as normal I was late leaving my house so had to run hard to make my normal train, I got off at Waterloo as normal then things got weird!! Running over Blackfriars Bridge, passing Smithfield market and then Angel where was I going? What day was it?? Had I made a mistake? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

No No No I hadn't I was on my way to the magnetic GoodGym Islington 😋😋 to help look after the ship along with the every energetic supremely supportive Task Force😎😎 while Simon had a well earned day off.

Great to see such a vibrant and welcoming GoodGym community, GoodGym Vetrans marshalling and encouraging GoodGym newcomers at every turn. And the Newbies getting stuck right into their fitness and doing Good journeys. 👏🏼👏🏾👏🏽

After a much needed warm up to raise our pulses, mobilise our joints and activate those key muscle groups we split into three select units to take to the streets and power our way up the Islington mountain 🏔🏔🏔 for the 3.3k run to Claxton House. 21 short minutes later we had all arrived and we're all gloving up to tackle the tasks ahead. The flower beds were being raised at a fantastic pace in preparation for some Spring planting 🌼🌷🌾🌹. While DJ Pat was pumping out the tunes 🎼🎤🎧📀📀 his glow in the dark decks for the privileged weeding and pruning crew at the front of the building! And the most I quote "Annoyingly Satisfying" task of the evening was under way with the old playground flooring being scratched, cut, jabbed, yanked then finally to much hooping and hollaring ripped up and broken down 💪🏾💪🏻💪🏼.

35 minutes went in a brink of an eye! All the flooring up up and pilled up, the flower beds were prepared for planting, the bushes had been cut back and the weeds had been removed 👏🏾👏🏼👏🏿👏🏻. We said our Goodbyes and split up into our running units for a handicap race back to base with the Philosophical runners leading us off followed by the medium sexy group a couple of minutes later then the speedies soon after them. The final 2 groups had the privilege of running around the greatest football stadium in the world to increase the level of difficulty in te dash to the finish. A super strong 3.3k run back aided with a bit of helpful gravity enabled a blistering sprint finish from the Philosophers to take the 🏁🏁🏁 closely followed by the rest of the team after a scorching lap of the Emirates Stadium.

Some beautifully executed cool down stretches finished off a great evening of fun on a run.

Don't forget to sign up for next weeks task here

Thank you all for looking after me, and hope to see you all at a Hackney GoodGym run on a Tuesday evening very very soon.

Until next time

Smooth Running

Joel

On a very blustery night 12 GoodGym runners headed down to Stepney City Farm with Anna and Andrew Cornick masterfully navigating the mazy East London streets. Splitting up into three teams we worked hard for 35 minutes moving fresh compost across the farm, one team loading wheelbarrows, one team running the barrows to the other compost heaps and one team on top of the heap turning the fresh compost over.

After the task was complete Simon from the Farm took us into the barn to see the 48 hour old new kid goats with their less than sprightly Mum over seeing proceedings. After 10 minutes of learning about goats and making suitable 'ahhh' noises Tom took us back down to earth. We ran out to Mile End Park where we followed the parkrun route completing fartlek intervals of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds repeatedly as we made our way back to base.

After a short stretch we disappeared into the gales of the night.