A good-sized group on another balmy August evening

16 of us headed out this evening in a last minute task-change to Weaver's Adventure Playground, a short run away.

Jobs aplenty

On arrival, task owner Alex had quite a list of jobs for us to get involved with, from constructing tables from previously discarded furniture, to measuring, matching and sorting large planks of wood along with a variety of painting tasks.

The teams were soon dispatched to all four corners of the playground and, as usual, were soon getting stuck in. It soon became apparent one of the toughest aspects of the task was going to be seeing and freeing large nails firmly lodged into wood. Alex quickly came to the rescue with a crowbar crash course and Gabrielle wasted no time in showing a particularly stubborn nail who was boss.

The team worked quickly and effectively, exchanging drills for saws, as they motored through the large wood piles, with the painting crew barely stopping, other than pausing for a brief colour consultation.

Before we knew it, we were out of time and posing for our final pics before saying cheerio to Alex.

I feel the need, the need for speed

And so we headed to Weavers Fields to begin our speed session of the day. Brilliantly led by Chris, and speedily paced by both Bryon and Chris, the running task tonight was 400m intervals. This was broken up into 2 x 200m spurts: the first 200m at “your 7/10 pace” and the second 200m at “your 9/10” pace. The team sped through a total of three of these sprints – no mean feat as the temperature was hitting 26 degrees again – and we enjoyed some active recovery with our Ab Attack session, in between each lap.

We then sped back to base before heading to the pub for a quick drink.

Shout-outs galore

Great big thanks and massive well done to Chris and Bryon for leading the speed session again, and to Chris for distance-calculating and lap counting. Great back-marking this week from Becky and full credit goes solely to Clare for this week’s wicked pun.

And it really was very lovely to have Sam from Hackney join us tonight, and Nina from Islington back again. What a treat – please come again soon.

Next week: a Bank Holiday bonanza...

Next week, we’re set for a two-task Bank Holiday bonanza, when we’ll be finishing this week’s work at Weavers, as well as meeting our friends at Meath Gardens for more summer gardening and tree-watering from the canal, followed by a flexibility masterclass to keep those injuries at bay. Not one to miss, so sign up here.

Love your neighbourhood? You bet.

A large group of energetic runners, keen to do their bit for de-littering their borough, made their way to beautiful Victoria Park, to join the Council’s fourth borough-wide Big Clean Up, part of its ‘Love Your Neighbourhood’ campaign.

We were met by Richard, our task owner for the evening, and Mark, from Veolia, who wasted no time in dispatching us to the four most needed corners of the area, after kitting us all out with hi-vis jackets, litter-pickers and gloves, after our extensive health and sfatey briefing.

Festival goodies

As usual the Good Gym-ers covered an extensive area, heading deep into the park only satisfied as their bin liners began to really fill up. Post-festival litter was in abundance: a rather- well-hidden pack of Guinness was found under a bush, along with several strange looking vials and some er… undergarments. Thank goodness for litter pickers. As usual, the runners were loathe to be pulled away from the work: “Come on, come on, you’re late back”, prompted the response, “But there are so many cigarette butts.” This sums up Monday night runs for me.

Masterclass: Catch Becky and Core Lucky Dip

Before we knew it, we were saying farewell to Richard and his team and heading to the wooden canoe, the area that was to be our fitness playground for the next 15 minutes. Tonight we were playing “Chase Becky.” Becky headed out for a lap of the park with a 10-second lead, then Bryon headed up the team to catch her, before everyone raced back to the wooden canoe to play Core Lucky Dip. First and last runners picked a number between 1-7 from a delightful list of exercises.Thanks to Yesh for unknowingly picking the two-toe-touch plank; Sarah for the butterfly crunch and Leanne for the speed-skater-squat-on-steroids. Yesh then headed the chase back out of the park.

…And so to the thankyou’s

What a very busy evening. Thank you’s in abundance tonight! Thank you to Bryon, such a terrific task force member, for leading both the run to the task, the chase for Becky and for behind-the-scenes planning.

Thank you to Becky for being a brilliantly fast and fun real life greyhound hare, and to Yesh for an impromptu last minute sprint.

Thank you to Leanne and Domitille for back-marking, and to Sarah and Leanne, our brilliant task force members, for welcoming our first-time runners, and to Gabrielle for much-needed delegating, and organising the start of the run, following an unanticipated DBS delay.

Welcome to new runners Eszter and Karris - well done on a busy, and big workout, night for your first run. We’d love to see you again soon.

It was a mega-blast tonight! Thank you all so much: for your ideas and input; for being such fun, for being such determined litter-pickers, for working so hard at your fitness…The list is endless, as always. I just can’t WAIT to do it all again next week: sign up for water-carrying at Meath Gardens - AKA The Human Chain Task - here.

*Apologies for the limited photos from tonight’s run – an unprompted, mid-task, IOS update meant we’ve just got before and after pics this week.

It was an eager team that set out for the Royal London tonight. After being very patient with tonight's extensive task-briefing, the Tower Hamlets crew flew down the mile-long route to the hospital where our delighted and excited task owner, Nancy, was meeting us, along with colleagues Richard and Marufa.

Numerous tasks

This was our first time at the Royal London Hospital where we were booked in for a variety of different tasks.

David headed up the postering team, tasked with putting up information posters on as many of the hospital's 14 floors as the team could manage in the short time available.

Becky headed up the gardening team, whose job it was to weed, litter-pick, and generally tidy up as much of the hospital's designated green space as possible.

Issmaeel had the job of leading the walking-route-planning team, a key task that involved planning a hospital-based walking route as part of the End PJ Paralysis campaign ("For patients over the age of 80, a week in bed can lead to 10 years of muscle ageing, 1.5 kg of muscle loss, and may lead to increased dependency and demotivation. Mobilising (moving) has been shown to reduce falls, improve patient experience and reduce length of stay by up to 1.5 days.")

Leanne and Miranda has the task of spray-painting wheelchairs for the trauma ward, which proved to be one of the trickier tasks...

Our 45 minutes in the hospital flew by, and before we knew it we were congregating for our goodbye pics. It seemed no sooner had we arrived, than we were heading back through the revolving doors, returning to the hustle and bustle of Whitechapel Road, where we soon picked up the pace following tonight's speedy pacer Danny as fast as we could manage back to base.

New faces!

We were a group of 26 tonight = it was a joy to have both new and familiar faces in the team. Hello, and welcome, to new GG Stockport trainer, Lisa , who joined us on a busy night, and who stayed smiling, and unfazed throughout the whole evening, and lent a hand continually to all the teams.

Hello and welcome too, to Christie and Clare, not new to GG, but new to Tower Hamlets. Thanks for the hard work, so many smiles, and really hope to see you again soon. And welcome too to Insiyah who joined us for her first GG run - it was lovely to have you on board, thanks for all that hard work, and please come and run with us again soon.

And a big UK GG welcome to Colin , who was visiting us from Canada! What a treat for us, and well done for all your work.

...And to the thank-you's

And so to the thankyou's which seem to grow each week. Thank you to David , for being on board with last minute planning and for heading up the postering team. Thank you to task force member Becky for tonight's stats, heading up the gardening team, and for welcoming new runners and Lisa, and being such a warm and welcoming face of GG.

Thanks toDannyfor being our speedy pacer back to the hotel.

Thank you to task force member Leanne, for brilliant backmarking as usual, and more behind-the-scenes planning with me, and a massive thank you to Issmaeel, for bundles of behind-the-scenes planning (this started middle of last week for poor Issmaeel) with his insider knowledge, and for heading up the walking route team.

Thank you to Polly and Si, who we left in the hospital briefing Nancy on the team's brilliant walking work. That's above and beyond, and I was very proud of what you achieved. And I can't WAIT to do it all again next week...

SPEAKING OF NEXT WEEK...

...Moving on to next week, come and work off Royal-Wedding-party-calories on Monday! We’re staying local at Cranbrook Community Garden to help the team get ready for their big Open Day, before heading to beautiful Meath Gardens for a special Ab Attack workout. Sign-up is here.

...And don't forget the GoodGym Olympics on June 30th!

…And don’t forget the GoodGym Olympics on June 30th. A description of the events you can enter is here, while event info and sign-up is here. The deadline for signing up for an event is June 3rd.

Do come and join in the Olympic fun - whether you fancy a speedy Summertime sprint or just spectating & sandwich-eating, there’ll be something for everyone. And I’d love to hear from anyone interested in designing our flag and torch!

It's a task SOS!

So there we were, all lined up up for a straightforward trip to Stepney Farm when an urgent call came in on Friday from longstanding task owner, Margaret at Hollybush Gardens, explaining that some urgent digging was required for planting in Rocky Gardens. After a great big GG shout-out, many pairs of hands came to the rescue this evening, so we were able to despatch two, impressively-sized teams, to two tasks.

Tonight's intro took place on the Town Hall steps (daylight, warmth...bliss!) as we were a big crowd and felt like we were at a rather crowded house party in our hotel room. After a warm-up in Peel Grove ("Let's play a game: who's got the tightest hip flexors...What do you mean that's not fun? Actually, I'm sure flexibility-shaming's a thing, come to think of it.") we went our separate ways.

Hot footing it to Hollybush

Leanne took the Hollybush team off to see Margaret and Michael, where the team turned over the soil in the planters, ready for new crops to help supply the local food bank; cleared and tidied plant pots and then re-housed some grateful snails. The group then took a long Victoria Park-detour back to the hotel, planned brilliantly by Bryon and Leanne, led and data-recorded by Dave, taking the Hollybush crew to a respectable 5K. Thanks to Gabrielle for some brilliant back-marking.

A fast pace back from the farm

I led the Stepney City Farm team down the road where Clare, our task owner, had several tasks lined up: one team led by Patrick were in charge of woodchip-ing the entire plant shop (a meatier task than I'm making it sound - it involved moving many plants, planters and heavy compost; shovelling and wheeling woodchip) while Lianne was Bin Team Leader (we're still working on a more glamorous task title for her), her team tasked with emptying 10 big bins. Fitness Feat of the Night goes to Patrick for his unstoppable and impressive wheelbarrow-running. After a quick breather to look at the bunnies and piglets, we finished with some delightful lateral lunges, sweeping-leg-planks and our tuck'n'roll-for-the-tum before heading back to base.

Our plan was a tempo run back to pace and 'comfortably hard' was the recommendation. For most of us, it was an 'uncomfortably hard' pace trying to catch Danny who led us back to base, really kicking it up a notch. Thank you Danny - please come back and lead some more speedwork, it was a totally exhilarating end to the task. And a massive well done to Polly for quite a spectacular sprint finish.

What a team

What a night! Thank you everyone - yet again you wowed our task owners with the sheer amount you were able to accomplish.

A very big warm welcome to first time runners Zeina, Jess, Clio and Martin & Rosemary - it was a joy and a privilege to be with you at your first Group Run. Thanks for your smiles, your hard work...thank you for making it a brilliant night. I really do hope you'll join us again very soon.

A big thank you too, this week, to the brilliant Tower Hamlets Task Force: Becky one of our regular running-data gurus and our 'social secretary' (again, the title's a work in progress); Bryon for lots of behind-the-scenes planning with me (and for putting up with weekend planning-panic emails); Leanne also for lots of behind-the-scenes planning and for heading up a fantastic night at Hollybush, and to Dave for leading and recording the route, and our back markers for the night, Patrick and Gabrielle.

When can we do it all again?

Next week, we're back at the farm so do join us for another night to remember - I just can't WAIT to do it all again.

(...Keep your eyes peeled for details of our May 6th gathering at The Coburn where we join forces with Mile End Parkrun for the pub quiz! It's a Sunday but NOT a school night, as it's a long Bank Holiday weekend, so do put the date in your diary).