Goodgym Islington were so happy to celebrate their first group run back at The Arsenal Community Hub since 2020, and were thrilled to have 12 Goodgymmers along with us. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces from classic group runs past, regulars from lockdown community missions and complete first timers giving Goodgym a go (welcome Matthew).

After a short warm up utilising the mighty slope up to Emirates Stadium, our team run to Market Road Gardens (one of our favourite task locations) via Mackenzie Road (passing Ringcross Community Centre on the way). 2 miles total distance covered this evening by everyone involved (Thank you for backmarking, Steve)

Area activator Simon unlocked all the gates for Market Road Gardens (a lovely permaculture project), and our crew wheeled out a collection of wheelbarrows, rakes, spades, huge brushes and shovels. We even created a glorious vehicle called "Herbie" out of an abandoned shopping trolley and a storage tub found in Heyward Adventure Playground. Our primary focus for the evening was to clear a huge pile of wood chip off the vehicular access point for the playground users, and into an allocated storage bay. Many hands got cracking with shoveling and transferring the wood chip across the park, while Patrick took charge of depositing the wheelbarrows neatly in the loafing bay.

Our 2nd task involved sweeping and clearing lots of mud, green waste and debris off the pavement surrounding the entrance to the community centre. This was all strewn across the paths after the very heavy rain over the weekend, so we collected as many of these obstacles as possible.

We admired our handiwork for a bit (all major tasks completed within 45 min!) before running and cycling back the Arsenal Community Hub, and topping off our group run with a final hill rep and a bit of stretching.

9 of us then made a visit to a great local bar called "The Highbury Library", located just behind our start point for some light refreshment and a quality catch-up!

Sign up to next Monday's group run to Elizabeth House Foodbank here:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/elizabeth-house-foodbank-deliveries-d4ac3696-9cf6-4492-8bd0-93ae52054178