A handful of dedicated regulars this week greeted Ellie who’ll be coming all the way from Brent to take care of us this autumn as Cory turns his attention back to his home turf of Westminster. Don’t worry, he’ll be joining us one week soon for a send off.

Our task this Tuesday saw us return to Mabley Green Meadow to make light work of some thistles which, having been ‘Good Gymed’ before have started to encroach on the poor little fruit trees growing there. The gardeners there have planted an assortment of fruit trees on a little green at the back of the park which the local residents are invited to help themselves to.

River Dance-esque cadence drills

Traveling light as a group of just seven we maintained a speedy pace on route to our meeting spot, leaving us with time to further activate our legs and stay warmed up before our hosts arrived. Some table-tennis table assisted stretching was followed by a combo of duck walks, crab walks, hops, skips and jumps, interspersed with shouts of ‘FREEZE’ from Ellie - not to mention the River Dance-esque cadence drills.

Our target pace for the run home was just-fast-enough-to-not-be-able-to-chat so back to E5 we ran and then home to our various eagerly anticipated dinners.

After what seemed to be a day when the sky couldn’t make up its mind the clock finally made its way down to 645pm where 17 GoodGymers headed back to Wilton Estate for some weeding, painting, lifting and shifting.

A few newbies so a very in depth briefing on how wonderful goodgym is and what a difference their attendance makes to the lives of many.

We headed a mile down the road where we were greeted by the lovely Deborah and broken up into a number of small teams.

One team would be varnishing the lovely wooden eel that the rain had had its way with. Some would be weeding, some would be attempting to get a rogue bush under manners by using nails and a hammer to control its direction of growth and some would be ferrying wood from one side of the estate to the other.

We had our instructions and we had our tools and off we went with 45mins on the clock.

As time ticked on it was clear that we would be finished early, some headed off with Kevin on a 5k route to get those legs moving and the rest came with me on a shorter run back through the park and back to E5 where we had another task waiting for us.

The E5 bakehouse is home to some of the most amazing bread that you will ever taste. In order to make this bread they need a mill. Our job was to make this mill look pretty and shiny again. Once we had finished I think its fair to say you could eat your bread off it lol.

A few stretches and a debrief at our local.

Thanks for joining us, hopefully see you all next week.

Another magnificent night last night chaps. 37 of us… really good. We took a whopping 93 kg of food to the task.

We also celebrated Maddy and Jitendra doing 50 good deeds and getting their highly sought after black T-shirts (Jay, yours is on it’s way)… well done guys!

We also kicked off the GoodGym Lambeth Great British Bake Off sweepstake. To recap the rules, the Tuesday after your contestant goes out you have to bake something from the theme that week…. We will have cake for 12 weeks… I am most excited.

OK, on with the report. I have decided to make this week’s report PUN-tastic… see if you can spot the theme.

We were all JAMmed into Papa’s for a PEACH (slices) of a task. We knew where we were going because we’ve (baked) BEAN to Vauxhall Food Bank many a time so it was a case of getting on the road with our food and getTINg going. Running up Brixton Road, on a mission in Lycra I felt a bit like Anneka RICE (pudding)…

Once we got there Faith weighed up all the food we’d taken and we had managed to take 93kg of food…. That’ll give us muscles.

Get TIN (s)!!!

Next week I’m away so I will PASTA baton onto Axel who will be leading the tasks.

See you in two weeks x

21 runners ran 5km focus on hip position to shift a tonne of Compost for Dalston Curve garden.

This session focused on hips. Good hips means good running.
We had to shift a mound of earth for Dalston Curve Garden. Home of Becky Greenwood's Pizza oven.

We jogged over to Dalston at a nice steady pace lead by Mark. Mark has great hips, and a nice light running style.

When we arrived they were not quite ready for us so we strengethed our cores and hips on the sand, in front of a band who played us some delightful music.

purple tunnel of "buddleja"

By this point we had a lovely load of spades and shovels ready for us to start shifting the mound of earth hidden behind the purple tunnel of buddleja.

Those not digging did more work on their hips, strengething with some flutter kicks, planks and mountain climbers on the sand.

"Space for a van"

By the time the reps were over the mound of earth was moved leaving ample space for a van.

"hip partners"

We headed to Hackney Downs for some more hip interrogation . We got ourselves some hip partners who kept their eyes on our hips to give us some feedback.

HIP INFO

If you're interested in little bit more hip stuff, here's a short video of Americans talking about good hip position, and here's a longer article about why it's important.

MISSION REPORT

While the rest of GoodGym Hackney headed to the Curve Garden, Ros and I did our best Charlie Dimmock / Alan Titchmarsh impersonations at a Groundforce-style mission in Stokey.

"rolls of astroturf"

We ran 4km to visit the friendly Rachel, who was ready to meet us in the front garden with rolls of astroturf and a selection of paving slabs. It soon became apparent Ros had been a Landscape Architect in a previous life, as she talked Rachel through her “vision for the space”.

"climbing into the brown bin"

We set to work clearing the space of garden waste, with Ros climbing into the brown bin to maximise capacity. With light rain falling, we laid the astroturf, pinning it in place with carefully arranged slabs.

"a very generous round of applause"

We all agreed the finished article was a lovely sight – and if Groundforce were rebooted, Ros would be top pick. We said our goodbyes and made a speedy run back to meet the others for a very generous round of applause and some much needed stretching.