On Monday evening, Area Activator Simon met up with long time Goodgym Islington regular Ernestas for a unique Octopus Community Network and Goodgym collaboration! 9 runners (including first timers Siobhan and Charlotte- welcome!) were invited into Elizabeth House Food Hub to stay out of the bitterly cold wind. Following our introductions, and a warm up on Hurlock Street, Ernestas directed our running crew over to Highbury Quadrant Estate near Clissold Park, an impressive community gardening project maintained by local residents and green volunteers. Octopus Community Network have started to run Tuesday evening classes on growing food, gardening skills and access to green spaces at the Birchmore Hall community centre, across the street. All of these events are free to the public, and accessible for the immediate neighbourhood on the Green Lanes and Highbury Quadrant estates.

From here, we separated up into 2 groups, and Ernestas lead us all to the first tower block on the estate. Our task was to drop off a flyer to each letterbox on the estate, as efficiently as possible. We achieved this by directing two runners to run to the top of the block, and then another pair to post flyers for the level below and so on, to make sure we are not flyering the same letterboxes over and over again. At the next block, the pair who formerly completed the top floor for the previous building would complete the bottom floor for this new one, and vice versa.

We all made quick work of our flyering (and kept moving as much as possible to stay warm). Ernestas suggested that our two groups of leaflet distributors should "face off" against each other, to see who can complete their tower block the quickest! Team 1 came home first, shortly followed by team 2 on the approach back to Highbury Quadrant after a successful run around the estate. The Octopus Gardening volunteers were thrilled with the amount of flyers dropped off in such a short amount of time, and are excited to see if this helps to encourage more attendees to their new sessions.

After an additional 1 mile run down Riverdale Road, almost all of our running team joined us for delicious pizza and refreshments over at the Bank of Friendship pub on Highbury Park for the Goodgym Islington monthly social. Well done everyone, well deserved!

We will return next week for our group run to The Rose Bowl Youth Club in Canonbury. See you then!