A special run, this one - a magical mystery tour of the locations that made up the first ever group run and the first ever coach run - from over 16 years ago (💾 📼 📟)!

Why? Well, to bid farewell to a special guy. He's tall, he's pale, he's handsome, he has an OBE. It's goodgym's founder Ivo Gormley. Many words were said about this man at the leaving party after the run, at the beautiful Calthorpe Community Garden, so we are not going to attempt to do him justice here. But the fact that a group of otherwise strangers, all wearing their red and black uniforms with pride, were gathered on the steps of York Hall (can you use their toilet? NO) a full sixteen years after the first group of otherwise strangers gathered on the steps of York Hall, to run around and help some people, has to mean something about how powerful and enduring Ivo's idea has been.

Warm up? LEG SWINGS UP THE WAZOO 🦵🏿💨 💨💨 - led masterfully and mindfully by Ade - along with some other limbs and muscles essential for running.

Bags loaded up in the Mechanical Cycling Machine™️ (it's Fast Boi Shaun Dixon on a cargo bike 🚚), we are led off by Euclides Montes who, by his own admission, doesn't actually know the area at all. But who cares?! It's the running that counts! More being lost equals more running! For the relatively small Venn diagram of people who were both a) on a goodgym run and b) knowledgeable about football, Darren performed the role of Roving Reporter (bluetooth speaker) with the GOALS! GOALS! GOALS! from England's match against DR Congo. There were indeed three goals but it wasn't a pretty picture for the 68 minutes between goal 1 and goal 2. We ran past some awfully concerned looking pub goers! But it had a happy ending WAHEEEYYYYY ⚽️.

First stop (probably, can't remember the order because the goals were so compelling) was St Hilda's East Community Centre - the site of the VERY FIRST GOODGYM GROUP TASK. In 2009, Ivo and 13 others emptied a cupboard. And how! St Hilda's is awesome - long-term friend of gg Tower Hamlets, the Centre (led by Lucy) provides bilingual advisory services around employment 🧑🏾‍⚖️, offers activity clubs to combat loneliness 🎯, exercise classes for the elderly 🪑 - it's the kind of place that communities across the country utterly depend upon.

Question, is it possible to belong to goodgym for 12 years and still not know the name of common little yellow flowers 🌼 that come in pots? Answer: Yes! But we planted them on the roof. Those who were particularly confident at differentiating between plants (alive) and plants (dead) also performed a valuable weeding service (let's hear it for weeds 🌱!), leaving things very spruce and cheery up on the terrace for users of the Centre to enjoy.

Next stop, just round the corner off Arnold Circus, where one Ian Drysdale (runs a long way, never looks sad 👨🏻‍🦱) gave us the next bit of the history tour. DID YOU KNOW that Ivo and Ian worked together in a social-enterprise-cum-think-tank in Shoreditch, before goodgym even existed? If you didn't, you could guess. Ian showed us the EXACT SPOT where Ivo first turned to him and said, "Ian I have an idea about a club where people run around and do helpful things instead of just be in the gym" and Ian was like, "WHAT? No Way!" and Ivo was like, "Yes absolutely WAY and I'm doing it, and you're DOING IT WITH ME because you know about computers 🤓 and I only know about films and being kindly." I am fairly confident this is what was said. And so goodgym became a thing with a name and a team.

One! More! Stop! It was only TERRY'S HOUSE wasn't it! "Who's Terry?" - have you been living under a rock? Terry was the clay-pipe-collecting (no, still no idea), amateur-boxing, newspaper-reading, Ivo-appreciating elderly man who became the defacto first-ever goodgym coach. Ivo used to run to his house and there they did have a chat, and that really was it and that was kind of the point. Another goodgym man John Hunter (👋🏻) has also been a long-time coach visit-doer and so said some words about this. Those words were like: "Having been running to my coach Florence 👵🏿 for 6 years, and then Richard 👴🏻 for nearly 2 years now, I have learned a couple of things about what it means to make these visits. It is a friendship, not a service, and it has the potential to be profound for both of you." They were very serious words and I'm not crying, you're crying.

With that, the history had been retold, and it was time to jog on 🏃🏻‍♂️🏃🏻‍♂️- to Calthorpe, and a garden full of over..ooh, a hundred? people with love and admiration in their hearts for the phenomenon that is goodgym. Ivo is a very humble man, but let's be honest, it wouldn't exist without him, would it?

The previous week was spent nervously checking the weather forecast. Legs itching to run. In the final few days the carb loading commenced.

And after all those months of training the day finally came.

The sun shone (contrary to the forecast for cloud), the temperatures rose, and a record 40,382 people took part.

Some were running their first marathon, others were seasoned pros, but every member of Team GoodGym got out there and ran their very hardest. There was sweat, there was probably blood, there was sunburn and there was definitely chafing but we did it!

Special thanks too to the cheer crews who came along to support - you gave us all a boost when we needed it.

6 women, 3.2km run, skirting boards / radiators / doors painted and a boxercise mini class all in 90 minutes.

Talk about getting things done!

With an all female ensemble (hello to Jessfor the first time), we set off the 1 mile run to Copleston Centre Church to meet Vicar Paul and Catherine who had some glossing for us to do.

Gloss paint: Shaken or stirred?

We shook two and stirred one FYI. Didn't really see any difference but we will let you know. The centre has a cafe where they host meals for refugee organisations and for homeless people and it's gotten used and well loved over the years. After 45 minutes, we'd covered skirting boards, 2 radiators and 2 door frames and it looked like new!

With the knowledge that Jo might use the hill we had run up as a training aid for the journey home, jelly babies were shared around and what followed was reminiscent of a GG Islington debate. Is there a difference in flavour of the various coloured jelly babies? Differing opinions meant we had to test it out... Luckily, the boxercise class next door hadn't filled up to witness this joy. The answer... Not clean cut as only 2 out of 6 of us got our jelly baby colour correct. (You can cheer Beth and Ruth for this unique talent).

After mentally prepping for hill running, the boxercise class leader threw a curve ball in the shape of pads and gloves and invited us to join their class.

6 jab cross combos with shuttle runs in between for 15 minutes is a lot harder than you'd think. After a few rounds of 'start with your left hand,' we'd sorted our co-ordination out and we're loving it. Both Becky and Chiara were particularly strong boxercise fans.

More than a little warmed up and rid of any midweek stress, we ambled back down the hill to Old Spike, glowing and glossed.

Just in case you hadn't noticed... you can click on each runner's name and cheer them on! Or even add them to your team so you can cheer on all of their achievements (without being too creepy, please).

Last night we ran to the Sue Godfrey Nature Reserve in Deptford for some hardcore rake action. It was brilliant- a good core workout, an incredible sunset and a lesson about our local areas. Blooming fantastic.

London's Grand Canyon

This week we helped out Creekside Education Trust. You can look at their website here. You should- they do some fantastic stuff that you can get involved with. We were met by Nick from the Education centre. He has lived in Deptford for 40years and gave us an brilliant potted history of 'Deep Ford'. It's named after its tidal Creek.

The Creek’s waters, muddy banks and flood defence walls are home to a wide variety of wildlife and the Centre provide a range of educational opportunities for school children and low tide discovery walks for adults.

We were helping in Sue Godfrey Nature Park, a wildlife park that's home to 200 species of wild flowers, shrubs and trees and a wide variety of invertebrates including butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets! They are changing the way the park is managed to enable them to grow more wildflowers. To this end the grass has recently been mowed and they needed some help raking up the hay and tossing in the compost to enable more lovely stuff to grow in its stead.

Rakers and baggers

We split into teams of rakers and baggers and, under an incredibly atmospheric sky we got to work. We quickly filled the sacks and raced them over to the compost pile. It was a brilliant workout and Nick's explanation made the task feel really worthwhile. 40mins and roughly 6 full sacks of hay later we had to make our way for a run so collected all the tools, thanked Nick, and headed for the Thames.

Going through the Gears

On the way home we pushed the pace, experimenting with a few 'gears' or paces as we dashed along the Thames path taking in spectacular views of the city. Brilliant.

See you all next week!

On a chilly evening 28 wonderful GoodGymers met in Camden to tackle two tasks head on!

The news last night was that there are new members of the Camden TaskForce, (Polly, Meredith, Jess, Chris and Frances will be joining Pritesh - woop woop. Also we are racing the Regents Park 10k and Hackney Half Marathon - come and join us!

First Task - Homeless Shelter - written by Pritesh:

On an annoyingly cold night 10 prompt arrivers (including first time runners Laura, Gabriel and Will) set off for our penultimate visit to the American International Church, with myself and Becky leading and back-marking the group we made swift progress to the church and there met Stephanie who doled out our instructions.

Methodical approach

A slightly easier night with only 11 beds needed, we went for the methodical approach this week doing duvets and pillows first before laying out the mattresses and applying our best ‘hospital corners’ to the sheets and then getting the beds evenly spaced out before we could survey our work and fit in a quick group snap.

We then made our way to Granary Square and got ourselves involved in some exercises.

Second Task - Skip Garden - written by Polly and Paul:

Our second task of the evening was to Skip Garden, a project which aims to connect people to each other and the natural world by creating hands-on and reflective opportunities. Today we were tasked with turning the compost machine to keep the garden green and fed. We split into two teams of 8, one led by Lucia and the other led by Polly. The latter wrote the following task report:

Kept warm with a duvet, the mechanical composter likes to be fed a mix of "browns and greens" (wood chip pellets and garden waste). It had only been fed greens recently and had got a bit bunged up.

Browns and Greens

Chief Gnome, Paul, tasked us with turning a big handle on its side which activates a big cork screw, mulch​ing up all the ingredients inside. A bucket at its bottom collect​ed the compost cocktail. This cocktail is then fed back into the​ ​machine with pellets. This must be repeated until it poops out nice brown compost. Lovely.

Liz afterwards said pushing that lever around for the compost machine was like flying around like a hamster!

While Team Polly got to work Paul led the rest of the group to a local square and benches to do some conditioning exercises and intervals. Firstly we started off with some step exercises to strengthen our glutes and legs, then we did an interval session to build fitness and then we did triceps dips and squats for further conditioning.

Then the teams switched and repeated the above. With the arrival of the Task One team we were all collected together for the first time, said goodbye to Paul from Skip Garden and headed to the canal for either a 3 or 5km run.

Next week there'll be two tasks again, it will be the last time we are going to the homeless shelter for the winter season and another group will be off to Camden Foodbank, Simon the Islington Trainer will be leading.

See you in two weeks - enjoy!

PB out.