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

It was a Force of July on this Independence Day as 32 GoodGymmers gathered round Highbury Pool ready to do good. We did our news (so much news) and welcomed Emily and Claire (already in GG t-shirts!) along for their first runs.

New Richmond trainer Mark got the gang nicely warmed up before we headed off for our evening tasks.

John and Graham took a small group up to Whittington Park for our fortnightly weeding session. Graham tells us what went down:

Whilst the main group of GoodGymers ran to Barnsbury community centre, a smaller group of us ran a total of 6k (8k including post-run Highbury Fields laps!) to visit Whittington park, sanding benches and weeding the one o'clock club garden.

The classic debate of what counted as a weed continued, and all were very happy to see that some potential weeds we left two weeks ago had grown flower buds - great display of horticultural knowledge from all involved! Meanwhile on the other side of the park, four enthusiastic sanders continued sanding down two flower-bed-containers, ready for varnishing and repainting. It's quite addictive, like watching a lava lamp. Most relaxing GoodGym task ever?

Post-run, we arrived back to Highbury Fields ahead of time (nice one John!) so decided to throw in an extra two laps, including a small bit of speed work on the second lap round.

More running. More sweating. More good. Top effort from all.

Graham

Meanwhile Simon and Mark popped over to Barnsbury Community Centre for some painting (which we hardly ever get to do at GG Islington) and assembly of flatpack (which we have NEVER done at GG Islington).

8 of us went off to paint the cubicle doors in the women's toilets a GoodGym red and the cubicle door in the men's toilets a freedom blue. We got the doors painted no problem, the difficult part was cleaning up: gloss paint everywhere and only one small bottle of white spirit between us. This meant we ended up running a little overtime, but nice to get the job done!

Over in the main hall the rest of the group had managed to assemble all furniture and Mark took them outside for a fitness session: jogging, side shuffles, lunges, planks, push ups, squats, wheelbarrow poses, deadlift and press, box jumps with a partner, step ups and star jumps to plyo jumps. Wow, I got tired just reading that. Looks like GG-ers in Richmond are gonna get a decent workout on the 18th.

Our cookies for the evening were Oreos: the most American biscuit available in Tesco Hackney Superstore and the debate was "What's the most American thing you can think of". Apple pie, Sweet potatoes and Marshmallow, TRUMP, Walmart, weird pronunciation, hamburgers, and mass shootings were all given as answers. But Andy and David came up with a wonderful combination that definitely wins:

"Uncle Sam, with an eagle on his shoulder, and a miniature Statue of Liberty on the dashboard, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" while driving a Chevvy down Route 66 on his way to a baseball game, eating a burger and massive cup of soda that he just picked up from a diner."

Happy 7th of April everybody! See you next week

Simon

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