23 GoodGymers ran 5km, collected up 25 bags of leaves for WPCA & did the Monthly Emirates Time Trial

Well that was a lovely cold evening with you all, welcome along to Beth, Lucy and Joel whose first time it was last night! Welcome!

In the news this week:

1. GoodGym did a Cross-Country Race as part of the Met League at the weekend, was lots of fun! Report here, details for next races here.
2. We will be having a GG Islington Xmas meal on our last run of the year - Monday 11th December, more details to come!
3. Come along to the GG Members Xmas Party on Friday 8th December - black and/or red is the costume theme.

Right onto last night, after a quick intro and a dynamic warm up we headed to Whittington Park Community Assosication, running north via the back streets to avoid Holloway Road as long as possible. The WPCA is a brilliant local organisation! There mission is: ‘To provide a welcoming and well-run centre for individuals and groups in Islington to sustain and develop a vibrant community’.

We were there last night to help tidy up their outdoor areas around the centre and the nursery - if you haven't noticed it's Autumn at the moment which means all the leaves fall - this creates lots of mess that needs sorting. Armed with all manner of tools, gloves and black bags we split into three teams:

1. Aidan with his unique (annoying) litter picking skills and four others swept and weeded at the front of the centre.
2. A team of six, including Chris from Bristol, cleared an area of overgrowth and weeds. They even turned the soil afterwards!
3. Everyone else worked in pairs sweeping, raking and bagging up the leaves on the nursery lawn!

Leaf it with us

Team's one & two's jobs were done after 10 minutes and they joined the rest of the crew on the grass, bagging up leaves! After 30 minutes of hard work we'd collected up 25+ bags of leaves, weeds and debris - nice!

Saying our farewell's to Gary from WPCA we headed south back to the Emirates for our monthly time trial. Before giving it a go we practiced our arm drive in pairs - POCKET TO SOCKET!

Everyone did brilliantly in the time trial, lots of fun and some big PB's! Let me know if you want your results :)

Sign up here for next week, we will be rebuilding a bug hotel, planting bulbs and mulched flower beds for FROGG - gonna be a good one!

PB out.