After weeks of planning, I made it down to Work.Life Soho on a Sunday to met up with the Rep Runners team. With their 9th birthday coming up, they wanted to help give back so planned the lovely Anne and me decided to make a big day out of it. The plan was to run 2.3km to Trafalgar Square and help out a local charity give out food to the homeless.

The vibes during the run was amazing but unfortunately the charity part didn't go to plan. The meet up time on the charity's website was wrong, meaning that once we got there to help they had already left. Luckily for me, the Rep team were very understanding. We ran back to Work.Life, took a funny group pic by the Banksy statue, then enjoyed some snacks and refreshments provided by the Rep team.

The team are still keen on doing some charity work so hopefully we can plan another group one that will go to plan this time.

26 amazing GoodGyming GoodGymers ran 6k to Abney Park Cemetery to clear a kilometre if concrete path of mud and muck.

Big shout out to the GG first timers this week!! Very warm welcome!! Hope you enjoyed the session and will be back for more very soon!!

Huge thank you to everyone for helping me out!! From ** Amanda and Vinney** offering the use of their bikes, Chi and Clair leading the running, ** Liz** dominating the photography and all the well wishes, very much appreciated!!! Thank you!!

So 3k running up to Stokey to meet Quentin at the imposing gates of the magnificent Abney Park Cemetery. Grabbing the carefully placed tools and heading deep into the park to where even the many Abney regulars were not quite sure where we were.

With the dirt pathways having been lovingly reinforced over the last 6 months we turned our attention to the network of concrete paths that after the rough weather had become very muddy and debris filled. As these pathways are very narrow there is no way around some of these hazards so it was down to us to clear the way!!

With a massive group and some pumping music from the neighbours we worked to a serious beat and tore up and down, left and right along every path in sight!! Clearing with expert precision and the occasional lunge for optimal scraping angle!

With most of the pathways in the back half of the parks beautifully cleared we munched on some pannetoni from Liz and zipped back to base!!

Thank you all from coming out tonight and look forward to seeing you again next week!

Enjoy

Joel

30 Awesome GoodGymers ran 4k to London Fields to build and create a dead head fence for Hackney parks then 18 of the crew celebrated a few GG anniversaries at the February social!

With the combination of storms Ciara and Dennis causing us a change of plan from Abney to London Fields. We still had a bumper turnout of 30 GGers.

Welcoming in our new runners and heading out on a couple of local loops to to get the body warm for the task ahead. With feeling coming into your fingers and toes we rounded the corner with 4k of running under the belt. We grabbed the tools and headed off into the park to load up on twigs and branches to make and repair the dead head fence through the woodland trail.

Barrows, rakes, barrows at the ready we searched the parks and loaded ourselves up with the masses of fallen mini branches and twigs which got the wrath of Ciara’s path!!

Working hard so that we stayed warm we got so much done in 50 minutes of epic action before the time and cold hit and with a huge regeneration to the parks dead hedge complete!!

We dashed back grabbed our stuff and headed for well earned Pizza with an 18 strong crew.

Thank you all for coming along!! Big shout out to Pamela for the pun, Chi and Liz fir the extra pictures and Toyin for arranging the pizza extravaganza!!

Have a great week

Joel

24 Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to Wilton Estate community garden with a massive soil shifting, mulch spreading and weed grabbing task!

Welcome to our GG first timers Alix and Louis.

Hackney first social of the year next week celebrating (Clair’s 3rd, Amy’s 4th and Anne’s 6th GoodGym Birthday!!) Post group run we will be heading off probably to get Pizza in Broadway market, come along!!

A long loop to get the fingers and toes warm for the task ahead smashing out 3.5k along the canal and up to Wilton Estate to meet the team who were ready and waiting to for us!

Grabbing gloves and tools we rolled over to the huge soil, top soil and mulch delivery and got shovelling!!

We had groups weeding the big bed we have put a lot of work into over the last couple months as well as the side beds where the brown bins were filling fast!

The Shovellers were sending soil out to all corners of the garden moving well over 2 tonnes of premium soil, half a tonne of top Soil and 2 tonnes bags of mulch to create a lovely thick mulch bed ready to keep the weeds at bay.

We flipped into high gear to plant 200 bulbs and rake the mulch into perfect form before we cleared up and zipped away dashing back to base dead on 8:30 with a great physical task dominated!!

We will have more of the same next week at Abney Park Cemetery, see you there for more Tuesday GG fun!!

Enjoy

Joel

p.s thank you Liz for the pun!!