After a brief hiatus, the Saturday Morning Coffee Time sessions have returned for lockdon number 2 (every Saturday, on Zoom, at 10am). Open to all Goodgymmers up for a chat over breakfast, coffee or brunch!

Trainer Simon launched up the Zoom Chat, and met was first met with Caz, prepared with coffee in hand! She will be moving to Bristol in the next few months, so GG Bristol folks, please make her welcome! John Shirley then popped up online after running a local 5km loop- a great personal achievement as he is currently coming back from injury. Patrick joined us too, who is also planning on attempting a #notparkrun in Finsbury Park later in the day. Caroline logged in from her new location in Hackney, now with plenty of space for yoga and workouts, and Steve Lee joined us from his office, surrounded by plans of action for future design work. We were most excited about James, our resident baker, signing in, and seeing what he was creating this morning. We were not disappointed, as pulled out a tray of delicious looking Nordic buns from the oven live over Zoom, and proceeded to demonstrate how to create a perfect consistency for breakfast bread! We were all super jealous (and of Caz's amazing pile of pancakes created later in the day!).

Great to catch up with everyone, and will certainly be looking forward to hearing from you all next week!

8 Islington and Camden Goodgym regulars logged in to our weekly post-parkrun style coffee catch up this week, on a gloriously sunny Saturday morning.

Patrick had already participated in the Global parkrun Quiz that morning (9am every Saturday on Youtube- here is the link to get involved!), while James, Graham and Trainer Simon all made it out for running activities before joining our Zoom session. Kike was getting ready for a cycling session later in the day.

We all chatted about upcoming missions, and watching the recent "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" documentary on ITV. This lead to us discussing whether a virtual version could be organised as a meet-up session, and how we could make it work!

Our count-off question this week was "What examples of nature have you come across this week?". Our answers included:

• A murmuration of Red Admiral butterflies in Hornchurch Country Park
• The fattest, healthiest, smuggest fox!
• Bird song
• Bluebells
• Fearless prancing foxes
• More wasps and bees
• Confused seagulls away from water

It is always a pleasure to catch up with our Goodgym friends. If you would like to meet up next week- sign up here for more information.

Same time (Saturday 10am). Same place (your home). Stay safe!

37 runners ran 15 km to help the Down to Earth social enterprise in Gower.

08:40 and we gathered by the flag, a mix of goodgym runners and some who were new to goodgym - a special welcome to you! After a vigorous warm-up of pirate- and lovetrails-themed games, we set off to the Down to Earth project - a social enterprise that helps people to bring about positive change in their lives through meaningful outdoor activity.

On the way there, we stopped at Arthur's Stone for a dramatic reenactment of the Lion King and to take some photos of the stunning scenery. We soon had to stop again due to horses on the path. Many of them had foals, which were really sweet, but made us nervous about going too near them. Eventually the horses moved on allowing us past and we arrived at Down to Earth.

Once there we were welcomed with squash and biscuits and given a little introduction to the work Down to Earth does. They aim to make a positive difference in people's lives through sustainable construction, outdoor adventures and merging innovation in healthcare delivery with innovation in education. Inside the building were plaques made by groups of young people about their experiences at Down to Earth - it was moving to read about the incredible positive changes these young people had achieved through their engagement with the project. We split into four groups and were tasked with gardening, sawing, sorting timber and moving parts of houses. It was hard work in the hot sun, but many hands made light of it and we achieved an incredible amount working together. After a group photo outside the main building, we were off back to the festival.

We took a different route back, pausing on top of a hill for another great view of beautiful Gower. Ben stood on the trig point valiantly fighting off territorial wasps whilst taking photos of the group. The run back was fun, lots of down hill and some lovely shady woodland. We arrived back at the festival in time for a hearty lunch and having made new friends and done some good.

On Saturday 23rd February GoodGymmers from all over London descended on Finsbury Parkrun, including 15 pacing, marshalling, and bar-code scanning volunteers!

As well as locals from Islington and Barnet (local-ish?) we had tourists from lots of other GoodGym areas – including south of the river – which was lovely to see. As well as our 15 volunteers, there were also lots of GoodGym runners out there to enjoy the morning’s run – great to see all you lot too!

We filled a decent number of parkrun volunteer spots and it was ace to see a sea of GoodGym red around the park.

Finsbury parkrun isn’t your standard parkrun though – it’s got a rather large hill halfway round, which can really mess with your pace. With that in mind, everyone pacing did well to come in v. close to times. Well done to the runners!

We’re all about that pace, ‘bout that pace

• I paced 20 mins coming in at 19:57 (a sterling effort if I do say so, etc. etc.)
• Vic paced 22 mins coming in at 21:51
• Damian paced 25 mins in 25:03
• Steve paced 27 mins in 26:25
• Frances paced 30 mins in 29:59 (near-perfect!)
• Kike paced 33 mins in 32:58 (amazing!)
• Vicki and Charlotte paced people to 38 ½ mins

No trouble! A good few people running said we’d help get them to PBs – and we managed to spread the GoodGym word to a few more runners. The parkrun results show lots of PBs around the times we paced. Feel proud!

All credits also to our excellent marshals and barcode scanners who actually make parkrun possible. Great work. Parkrun is an amazing free thing we should all try to give back to every once in a while – why not volunteer at your local parkrun soon? There will almost always be a spot for you to do something!

*Title credit to Steve, who pointed out that for those pacing, this morning’s 5k technically made up: a GoodGym good deed, a parkun volunteering credit, and another parkrun. Notch up those numbers!

36 Goodgymers ran between 5-11km to collect up a massive 125 Christmas Trees for recycling!!!

Welcome along to Emily, Natalie and Mel whose first time it was last night. Plenty of regulars and tourists around too.

In the news this week:

1. It's GoodGym Islington 4th birthday next Monday, come along for Thai food and drinks next Monday after the group run.
2. There is a GG Islington Starter Session on Saturday 26th January - sign up here.
3. Chi is doing a training session this Sunday in Islington and Olivia is leading a long run in Richmond - join in.

Corrrr blimey what a welcome to 2019, we not only had more attendances than we've had for 18 months but we arguably broke a GoodGym record with 125 Christmas Trees collected on a group run.

GG's Angels

After a big old intro we warmed up and split into our four groups to cover as much as Islington as possible, looking for those Christmas trees. It is technically fly tipping leaving them out on the street and of course it's a real hazard. Therefore we are helping the community in lots of ways getting them collected and recycled.

We had four teams and there final scores were:

• Team Steve - ran 11km to Crouch End and collected 8 trees
• Team Paul - ran 6-8k around Highbury and collected 29 trees
• Team Paradise (Graham) - ran 6-8km to Paradise Park, Callie Road and Holloway Road and collected 40 trees
• Team James - ran to Barnsbury and collected 48 trees!!!

This is an insane amount of pulling, carrying and tossing of our piney friends - good work all.

Next week we will be helping St Lukes Community Centre and doing another round of Christmas Tree Collections - sign up here.

PB out