Brrrr. A great start to the new year with 18 GoodGymmers rocking up to do good on a Bank Holiday.

Lots of new faces too. Welcome to first timers Sam, Matt, Joe and Bianca. And a warm Islington welcome to Freya from Barnet and Rosie from Camden. We also said hi to Kate and Emma who were previously Islington regulars.... 18 months ago! To prove that time flies when you're not doing good they thought it had only been six! You know what this means? It means you will perceive yourself as living longer if you come to GoodGym.

Our planned task for the evening was cancelled so we went to the back-up plan of letting the residents of Highbury know all about GoodGym by dropping some flyers about group runs and coach runs through their doors. Nicely and quickly done.

Post-task it was off to Emirates for some fitness fun.

First up the "step-up" challenge. How many step-ups can you manage in a minute? In the right foot first version Matt showed the regulars up with a whopping 55 and in the left-foot first version Joe came out on top with another 50-something.

Then it was on to the famous Emirates "core-dination" challenge. Perform a mix of press-up, mountain-climb, squat and calf-raise in perfect sync with a partner. By the looks of some there was definitely still some Christmas "spirit" floating around.

Wait, there's more. Emirates "letter fartlek". Yes, do a lap where you jog between two letters then sprint between the next two. Harder than it looks.

All rather exhausting and time for some CONE GAMES. A quick game of cups and cones in which cones destroyed cups (I hope you still feel bad about that, cups) and then we played a new game with a hint of danger: Musical Cones. It doesn't sound dangerous until we mentioned that Islington regular "Pink Debbie" twisted her ankle playing this very game a few months ago (not at GoodGym - we don't hurt people). Everybody ran around and had to put their foot on a cone when the music stopped (when Simon stopped singing or when he gave up singing and just shouted "Go!"). Long story short, Steve won. Well done, Steve.

Well-warmed-up we headed back to the fields for the evening's challenge: Strava art! The cups and cones from earlier were each given a set of cones and had to do their best to create the GG logo on the landscape. Freya and Rhia led the groups and each did their best. Have a look at the photos and see what you think. Cones is the one that is basically just a line. Cups is the one that looks like an unfinished bow tie. Cups redeem themselves!

Back to the pool for a stretch, a chocolate digestive and a vote on this week's debate: should we give up debates? Of course not! Brilliant. More stupid debates next week.

We are celebrating our anniversary next week. We will be visiting St. Luke's + another task to be confirmed. And there will be post-run celebrations and a quiz. Be there!

See you there,
Simon

P.S. There are a lot of quotation marks in this report. Sometimes that just happens