I'm really happy to announce that 11 hardy goodgymmers braved the elements last night to help our with two local tasks. The first was a new location, Penn Road Gardens, just down theway from Holloway Road tube station, and the other was a classic task with the Single Homeless Project, over on Mercer Street, near Tufnell Park.

The Task Force were exceptional last night, with James Gilbert hosting the Penn Road Gardens task, keeping spirits high and taking photographs, and Steve Coman back marking and giving directions during our mighty task at SHP.

Also, super congratulations to Alix Guerber on becoming an ultra marathon runner last weekend! You absolutely smashed the North Downs 50 km!

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Before setting off, we all discussed our favourite parkruns, and parks to run in (interesting, this is usually two different answers- an awesome park doesn't always produce an awesome parkrun!). Top parkruns included Hampstead Heath, Finsbury Park, Hackney Wick, Dulwich and Mile End, whilst Clissold Park, Victoria Park and Regents Park definitely came out on top for top parks to run in.

After a short warm up on the slope towards the football stadium, we jogged carefully over to Penn Road Gardens to meet up with the residential volunteers. Six of our team (Susana- welcome on your first run, Claire, James, Eilidh, Sally and Abigail) stayed here to help with turning over soil using spades and forks, spreading compost over the fresh soil... and eating biscuits. Sounds like a perfect GG Islington task!

The rest of the crew (Steve, Graham, Tom, Frankie and myself), jogged over to Mercer Road (on a really nice udulating route- must keep this in mind for future training runs!) to meet up with Regina from the Single Homeless Project. We saw the mountain of woodchip about half a kilometre down the road before arriving to the site, and we knew that we had our work cut out! Our task was to get almost 4 tonnes of woodchip off the road outside the homeless centre using spades, forks and plastic rubble bags. Steve took charge of this military operation, and we agreed to shift as much as we could using the time allotted to us.

Amazingly, with a smooth operation of refilling bags, shifting the woodchip to the front patio (whilst avoiding Regina's bike!), and constantly shoveling whilst taking turns between roles, we moved at least 90% of the woodchip within 45 minutes. I was so proud of how happy our Goodgym group was to get stuck in, and really make a difference to someones day.

On our return trip, we were treated to a slight easing off of the rainfall, and a few uphill slopes back to HQ. Perfectly timed with our Penn Road Garden group, we met up just near Holloway Road, and ran together to the Emirites for some stretches and some well earned Caramel Digestives.

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Abi Perrin, Camden Taskforce (and occasional GG Islington runner when Netball practice has been cancelled) has set up a really cool sounding community mission this Thursday. Come down for some twilight gardening at the Story Garden at Kings Cross! Sign up here.

GG Cross Country (GGXC) is about to start up again, with our first Met League fixture happening at Claybury on Saturday 11th October. Awesome muddy fun to be had- all abilities welcomed, cross country is for everyone! Check out the Goodgym Race Team page for more information. For news about the upcoming Claybury fixture, click here.

Thank you everyone. Happy running!