5 years ago, Simon Loughran (a different Simon to our current trainer Simon) used to drive his car to Highbury Fields Leisure Centre, and offer to leave Goodgymmers bags in his boot whilst they ran off to complete tasks in the local area (in fact, here is the very first GG Islington run report from the launch event!). This was when the first pack of biscuits were offered to hungry runners, and the tradition lives on today (in our nice warm Emirates Stadium start point).

Excellent turnout last night, with 22 people runners in total (including our new starters Esme, Nikki and Lawrence- Welcome folks!). Our meeting room was full of conversation about race training, a weekend full of community missions and of course, anniversary curry celebrations. On this theme, we used the count-off to ask our runners: "What is their favourite curry/Indian food?"

The results were as follows:

• Anything Saag
• My Dad's strange tangerine slice curry experiment- It was actually really good!
• Naans, for the carbs
• Oh, yeah. Definitely naan. Garlic naan.
• Black Lentil Dhal
• Samosas
• Onion Bhajis
• Lager
• Chicken Tikka Masala- origin Glasgow!

Market Road Gardens

We performed a few warm up exercises on the Emirates slope to raise heart rates and body temperatures before jogging down Benwell Street towards Market Road Gardens. We were met with a very well organised array of tools and wheel barrows all set up and ready to be used! Straight into the task ahead.

A series of large builders merchants bags had been deposited on the sides of the vehicle entrance to Market Road Gardens and Lumpy Adventure Playground. Frequent trampling by coaches and minibuses over time has left the ground really slick and muddy, so our intention was to lay as much rubble onto the edges of the main access route as possible to stop this from happening.

Team 1 set to splitting open these bags and pouring them onto the necessary surfaces, and whilst other runners leveled out stone and gravel with rakes. Sheets of protective tarpaulin had to laid down first, before the contents of the bags were spilled onto the ground, to separate the stone from the mud.

Team 2 picked up the available wheel barrows and shoveled some fine concrete dust into them (this was a continuation of a previous task). This dust was then transported to a pedestrian walkway, and laid out for other Goodgymmers to rake and flatten.

Although our original intention wasn't to open all of the bags (as many as we can in the time we had available), our Goodgym group absolutely smashed it, and we left the site with a completely level vehicle access path. We are planning on having another group run here next week to completely finish the job, but we made an amazing amount of progress in a short amount of time!

Standard Tandoori

We made our way back to the Emirates for a series of stretches and some genuine New Zealand biscuits provided by James Gilbert after his Xmas travels.

To celebrate the 5th Anniversary of GG Islington, a reservation was made at Standard Tandoori on Holloway Road specially for our group runners. We had the restaurant completely to ourselves, and were served some absolutely delicious curries, vegetable sides, poppadoms and naan breads. Definitely worked up a proper appetite after some solid Goodgym work!

Congratulations for 5 years everyone, and see you all next week!

What a cracking way to start 2020 with Goodgym Islington- taking on one of our favourite annual tasks! 18 runners joined us at the Arc Centre last night (our alternative start location due to a rare Monday football match- back to the Emirates Hub next week) to gather Christmas Trees from the area immediately surrounding Rosemary Gardens. Welcome to our first timers Stephen and Nicholas, well done for getting stuck in!

The Count-Off

Before setting off, we asked the question: What are your New Year's Resolutions? Are you giving up anything? Starting anything? Or are they rubbish?

Our answers included:

• Continue training for London Marathon
• No more caffeine
• I'm a dry vegan!
• Going to actually listen to my physio...
• Nah. No changes. Keep doing what I'm doing!

Rosemary Gardens

We jogged over to our local Christmas Tree drop-off point in Rosemary Gardens, and became aware of what a massive task we were about to undertake- there were Christmas Trees everywhere! Islington is clearly a hotspot for Christmas Tree dumping.

Firstly, we performed a few warm-up drills (ankling, high knees, can-cans) to get the blood pumping. We then split into pairs, and ran a mini-circuit session. Half the group across the park and back to stretch the legs, whilst the other half of the group preformed a series of lateral leg swings, whilst holding onto their partner's shoulders for balance.

These paired up groups then became groups of 4 and 5, and our Goodgym crew scoured the local area hunting and dropping off Christmas Trees for approx 40 minutes (or as long as we could before our arms got tired!). Someone mentioned that they had found a "Festive Christmas Graveyard" of discarded trees just 100m away from our drop off point!

Honestly, it was pretty insane how many trees we gathered up in this time. The drop point was absolutely full to the brim, and we needed to enlist some top level tree wanging skills to fit them all in. We estimate that 105 trees were picked up within our time limit, and there were still plenty more to grab in the surrounding area (we also suspect that word got out that we were collecting trees, as some mysterious pines started appearing outside people's front doors).

Starter Session

This Sunday, we will be hosting an additional group run session for the January Challenge- a great introduction to Goodgym for new participants. And it's on a weekend!

Back to the Arc Centre to help clean and tidy their community space for the new year. We will start with a fitness session in the local area, but the task itself will be indoors.

Sign up here for more information.

Met League Cross Country

The next fixture for the Met League XC season is this Saturday (11th January) at the easily accessible Ally Pally! Goodgym Race Team is an extension of Goodgym which participates in events throughout the year, and is excellent fun. If you have never tried cross country before, I fully recommend joining our friendly, all abilities crew to give it a try.

Sign up here for more information about the Alexandra Palace fixture.